An analysis of the entirety of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare for the AQA AS/A Level English Literature B Aspects of Comedy exam. Includes key quotations to memorize; an analysis of literary techniques in each scene, and includes key themes across the text. Used to attain an A* in 2021 exam s...
Plot Summary – Orsino whines about music, and how it reminds him of Olivia, a woman he has
long-pursued but long-avoided speaking to in person. Curio offers him to go hunt, but that only
makes Orsino wallow more. Finally, Valentine enters with the news that Olivia will not love him for
she is mourning her brother for 7 years. Orsino takes this in as creepy way as possible and says
that if she loved her brother so much, imagine how much she would love him. No progress is made
in their romance by the end.
Key Quotations
- Or: “If music be the food of love, play on,/Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,/
The appetite may sicken and so die”.
o He is a vacillating character; in love with the idea of love and not so much a person.
- O: “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou/… Receiveth as the sea”
o Extended metaphor of a changing sea, and how love is a force of nature, overcoming
all those who resist.
- Or: “That instant I was turned into a hart/And my desires, like fell and cruel
hands/E’er since pursue me”
o A pun on hunting (hart = deer). He is a victim of his desires.
- Va: “Like a cloistress she will veiled walk,/… with eye-offending brine”
o Orsino is literally unable to see Olivia. Continues metaphor of sea.
- Or: “How will she love when the rich golden shaft/Hath killed the flock of all
affections else”
o He is willing to love on his terms only; when Cupid strikes (aggressive imagery) and
she sees reason.
Features of Language, Structure, and Form
- Personifying music and love; hyperbole.
- Wandering imagery; he quickly kills off the beautiful idea of love with an abrupt “sicken and
so die”.
- Caesura to show his inability to commit; enjambement to show the opposite.
- Eye rhymes (“thy capacity”) to show him revelling in emotion.
- Extended metaphor of a changing sea.
- Extended metaphor of hunting, with Orsino as both hunter and hunted.
- Symbolism in “veiled walk” and “eye-offending brine” to show Olivia closing off.
- Use of Cupid in his imagery; as well as making Olivia love him, the arrow will be used to kill
other lovers.
- Orsino talks in long, rolling speeches; his servants in short sentences.
- They are no closer to a romance at the end of this scene as they were at the start
Ideas relating to Key Themes (inc: Disguise; Deception; Desire; Melancholy; Misrule; Excess; Self-Love;
Gender; Madness)
- Disguise; Olivia is described as wearing a veil a façade when we really meet her; she is as
melancholic as Orsino.
- Desire and Excess; his love is discussed in terms of appetite.
- Melancholy and Self-Love; the semantic fields he speaks in show off his temperament.
- Misrule; a clear bridge between what a Duke should be, and what Orsino actually is.
Ideas relating to Key Motifs (inc: The Sea; Hallucination; Hunting; Fate; Coins; Letters)
- “when mine eyes did see Olivia first”; separation of Orsino from his eyes appearance VS
reality.
,Act One, Scene Two – Summary
Title – the One Where Viola Gets Creative
Plot Summary – Viola washes up on the shore of Illyria and meets a single-purpose expositional
character – a sea-captain – who tells her where she is, and the events that brought her here. She
realises that while she survived the shipwreck, her brother did not. She wastes little time wallowing
in self-pity; she deduces a plan to be a eunuch for the court of Orsino and see what Fate brings her
there.
Key Quotations
- V: “That with a beautiful wall/Doth oft close in pollution”
o Establishes as a character who understands the world; she will go far in Illyria.
- V: “Thou hast a mind that suits/With this fair and outward character”
o Can be said of few in this play, yet she says it to a character who has no real purpose.
- V: “Thou shalt present me as a eunuch to him… and [I] will speak to him in many
sorts of music”
o Viola’s quick-thinking is shown as antithetical to Orsino’s behaviour. Viola is willing to
do a lot.
- V: “What else may hap, to time I will commit”
o Leaves it to fate.
Features of Language, Structure, and Form
- ‘Viola’ and ‘Olivia’ are near-anagrams, establishing parallels early on.
- Parallel between her in Illyria, and her brother in Elysium. Similar words foreshadow that he
will soon be back.
- Literalises sc.1; the changing sea, and the “eye-offending brine”. Semantic field of fate at
the end suggests she and Orsino will be connected somehow.
- The use of short, direct questioning language to show Viola’s resourcefulness. This
resourcefulness is never realised in the end, when she is silenced in the final scenes.
- The use of Viola as an ordinary character outside of the influence of melancholy puts the
audience on her side.
Ideas relating to Key Themes (inc: Disguise; Deception; Desire; Melancholy; Misrule; Excess; Self-Love;
Gender; Madness)
- Disguise, Deception and Gender; she “adopts male attire as a kind of social, physical, or
psychological protection” Emma Smith.
- Deception Appearance; Viola states that “a beauteous wall/Doth oft close in pollution”.
- Madness and Melancholy; in retrospect, Orsino seems even weirder.
Ideas relating to Key Motifs (inc: The Sea; Hallucination; Hunting; Fate; Coins; Letters)
- The Sea; she is literally washed up, and changed by it. It has forced her into adulthood, and
into a world of confusion and carnival.
- Fate; “what else may hap to time I will commit” she is aware that much of her life is out of
her control, but if she lets people believe she is a man, she may have more control.
Aspects of Comedy
, Act One, Scene Three – Summary
Title – the One Where We Meet Toby, and Maria Meets Andrew
Plot Summary – Toby arrives home drunk and dismisses Maria’s request to be more respectful of
his niece (her mistress) and her sleep. The conversation wavers to Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whom
Toby talks up profusely. When he enters, gets Maria’s name wrong, and is ridiculed by her without
his knowledge, the audience understands that Toby’s suggestion that Andrew marry Olivia is
probably ill-advised. At the end, with just the two of them, the dynamic is revealed: Toby feeds off
Andrew, and Andrew is too dense to realise.
Key Quotations
- Mar: “By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in early a-nights; your cousin, my
lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours”
o Establishes the dynamic; Toby is a hedonistic figure of misrule, but his status prevents
him from being properly disciplined.
- Sir T: “I’ll confine myself no finer than I am: these clothes are good enough to
drink in, and so be these boots too”
o A pun to show his attitude to life.
- Mar: “He’ll have but a year in all these [three thousand] ducats”
o She knows Toby is feeding off Andrew, and although he gets three thousand ducats a
year, they will die from overindulgence soon.
- Sir A: “Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary
man has”
o He believes he stoops to be like ordinary people. Everyone in the play believes they
are special somehow.
- Sir T: “She’ll not match her… estate, years, nor wit”
o Comic; Toby thinks the fact Andrew is old and useless is what will get him in with
Olivia (carnival is a strange time for these people)
Features of Language, Structure, and Form
- Oxymoronic titles: “Sir” balanced by “Belch” and “Aguecheek”.
- Speaking in prose to break from the high status and important blank verse of before.
Juxtaposing worlds.
- Puns: “I’ll confine myself no finer than I am… let them hang themselves by their own straps”.
- Contextual connotations of a Renaissance man when describing Andrew.
- Contrast in how Andrew is built up, and how Andrew appears.
- The comedic duo use excessive introductions “Sir… Sir… Sweet Sir…” to prove they are, in
fact, knights.
- Ambiguity as to how they received these titles.
- Contrast between Maria’s underhanded wit and Andrew’s inability to follow (“Bring your
hand to th’buttery bar”).
- Low-class banter between the two at the end.
Ideas relating to Key Themes (inc: Disguise; Deception; Desire; Melancholy; Misrule; Excess; Self-Love;
Gender; Madness)
- Misrule; Toby is introduced as the character of misrule. Maria later becomes one of the 3
spontaneous marriages at the end of the play, and so her bid to make Toby calm down is in
vain. Kermode: “in ‘Or What You Will’ the choices of will are complicated by the
date, Twelfth Night, where Carnival turns the world upside down”.
- Excess; unlike Orsino, where his excess is of love and melancholy, Toby is an excess drinker,
and this is shown as equally destructive.
- Masters and Servants; Maria could not, in theory, talk to them the way she does.
- Disguise; Toby and Andrew do not hide what they are, and the lack of a disguise is damning.
Ideas relating to Key Motifs (inc: The Sea; Hallucination; Hunting; Fate; Coins; Letters)
- The idea that coins are all someone needs to have friends, and the destructive relationship
this establishes.
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