A-Level Twelfth Night Study guide for OCR students.
This resource, summarises the key quotes by character and theme in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'. Alongside these quotes, there are critical viewpoints in a chronological fashion along with the change in productions
"Twelfth Night" Essay on Sebastian's dramatic role and significance
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OCR
English Literature
Comparative and contextual study (H472)
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Critical Guide
William Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night:
Name:
,Contents
Antonio:.......................................................................................................................................................2
Feste:...........................................................................................................................................................5
Malvolio:......................................................................................................................................................7
Maria:........................................................................................................................................................10
Orsino:.......................................................................................................................................................10
Olivia:.........................................................................................................................................................12
Sebastian:..................................................................................................................................................14
Sir Andrew:................................................................................................................................................16
Sir Toby:.....................................................................................................................................................17
Viola:..........................................................................................................................................................18
Quotes and critical perspectives by themes:.........................................................................................21
Desire and love/lust:..................................................................................................................................21
Madness:...................................................................................................................................................24
Function of Comedy over time:.................................................................................................................25
Disguise and Deception:............................................................................................................................28
Gender and Sexuality:................................................................................................................................29
Further readings:.......................................................................................................................................31
Antonio:
Useful Quotes:
‘I have many enemies in Orsino’s court’ [2.1]
‘If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant’ [2.1]
‘Put up your sword. If this young gentlemen / Have done offence, I take the fault on
me’ [3.3]
‘Will you deny me now[his purse][To Viola]’ [3.4]
‘I snatch’d one half out of the jaws of death’ [3.4]
‘Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil / Are empty trunks o;erflourish’d by the
devil’ [3.4]
‘Antonio never yet was thief or pirate’ [5.1]
‘A witchcraft drew me hither: / That most ingrateful boy there by your side, / From
the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouth / His life I gave him and did thereto add /
My love, without retention or restraint’ [5.1]
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, ‘How have you made a divison of yourself? / An apple, cleft in two, is not much more
twin / Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian?’
Critical Viewpoints:
Jan Kott: “The desire of Orsino for his page, of Olivia for a woman, and of Antonio for his
young master, is not ‘confined’ in marriage resolutions”— Homosexual desire (early
criticism)
Steve Davies argues that ‘it would not have been possible to present explicitly [….]
homoerotic feelings on the Elizabethan stage, or indeed any stage since then, until the
legalization of male homosexuality. Sodomy […] became a criminal act under Henry VIII
punishable by burning.’ However, Davies also points out that in Elizabethan England there
was a ‘cult of male friendship and love’ which may find implicit voice in the play through
the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio, and Orsino and Cesario. (Socio-historical
criticism)
Nancy Lindheim argues that ‘much of Antonio’s language demonstrates the early modern
overlap in vocabulary for all strong positive feelings, the extent to which a single language
was applied unselfconsciously in discourses of erotic love, friendship and religion alike.’
She goes on to argue that ‘according to Renaissance theory, friendship occurs between
male equals […] it is superior to male-female relationships because it is a product of moral
choice which finds pleasure in souls, not bodies.’ (Early criticism of the play — the critic is
modern but the criticism is contemporary in nature.)
C.L Barber 1959 ‘Antonio’s impassioned friendship for Sebastian is one of those ardent
attachments between young people of the same sex which Shakespeare frequently
presents’
Stephen Orgel
‘The only overtly homosexual couple in Shakespeare [are Antonio and Sebastian], except
for Achilles and Patroclus’ c.1996. New Historicist critic.
Steve Davies 1993:
‘The rawest, most devoted and possessive love in the play belongs to [Antonio], so that an
emotional centre of Twelfth Night is located on its margins. Male friendship is too weak a
term for this absolute bonding between young men’
Antonio’s silence at the end of the play ‘is a mark of absence from the consciousness of the
text […] darker readings have tended to interpret [his] silence as a sign of exclusion and
alienation, providing a shadow which sets into relief and brings into possible question the
glossy “goldenness” of the harmonious romantic conclusion.’
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, ‘In Twelfth Night the failure of homoerotic fulfilment is located not in the major plot but in
the minor Antonio/Sebastian action’
Nancy Lindheim 2007:
‘Antonio’s silence [for most of Act 5 Scene 1] is not emotionally significant […] He is
included in the group, his role as Sebastian’s friend a strand in the social tapestry that
Twelfth Night weaves.’
Emma Smith 2011: [paraphrase]: The relationship between Antonio and Sebastian is not
necessarily homoerotic as Elizabethan Male-Male friendships were seen as the most
attainable form of love: platonic philia.
Smith also argues that a homoerotic reading is arguably a misreading as such a
classification of sexuality did not exist in the Elizabethan era, as such terms like
homosexual, transgender etc cannot be ascribed to characters. — This is true, apart from
New Historicist criticism would take into account the audience perspective. Critics such
Stephen Greenblatt argue that we are so immersed with popular culture that we cannot
not read Antonio and Sebastian as a homoerotic relationship.
Jacob Lund 2012:
‘The language of Antonio in relation to Sebastian’ is ‘openly homoerotic’
‘At the end of the play Antonio remains on stage to see the union of Sebastian and Olivia, a
woman the twin barely knows suggesting perhaps a specific rejection of male-male
relationships here’
Productions:
Early productions would have a doubling up for secondary characters, this potentially
explains his absence in [5.1], and an actor may have played Antonio and Sir Toby for
example.
1894 A pardon, by Orsino, was generated for Antonio in [5.1].
1974 RSC Peter Gill: Very bisexual production he staged it as an ‘exploration of rampant
bisexuality’ (Gill). Antonio is plainly Sebastian’s lover. This production is significant in the
history of the treatment of LGBTQIA+ in popular culture during the 20 th Century
2001 Posner Production: Antonio and Sebastian wake up in an unmade bed together —
possible homoerotic readings etc...
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