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Twelfth Night Questions

This document contains discussion questions about William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, focusing on various themes and elements of the plot and characters: 1) It asks about the significance of character names like Sir Toby Belch, Aguecheek, and Malvolio, and discusses the historical context of Illyria as a lawless battleground. 2) It questions similarities between Antonio from Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, and their relationships with younger men. 3) It examines parallels between Viola and Olivia like their near-anagram names and both losing brothers, and their roles as love interests for Orsino. 4) It connects themes of truth/falsehood

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709 views2 pages

Twelfth Night Questions

This document contains discussion questions about William Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, focusing on various themes and elements of the plot and characters: 1) It asks about the significance of character names like Sir Toby Belch, Aguecheek, and Malvolio, and discusses the historical context of Illyria as a lawless battleground. 2) It questions similarities between Antonio from Twelfth Night and The Merchant of Venice, and their relationships with younger men. 3) It examines parallels between Viola and Olivia like their near-anagram names and both losing brothers, and their roles as love interests for Orsino. 4) It connects themes of truth/falsehood

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Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
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Twelfth Night Discussion Questions: Page 1 of 2

Questions:
Names: Bearing in mind that names in this place are particularly descriptive: (Sir
Toby Belch, Aguecheek, Malvolio)
Illyria as a province ceased to exist by AD10. This strangely archaic setting is
never reflected in performances. In WSs time the area was effectively a
permanent battleground between the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires, and
would have seemed pretty wild and barbarous. What does the name conjure to
you?

Antonio: Is it more than economy that both this seafarer and the Merchant of
Venice, who dote on feckless younger men and incidentally are much invested in
ships, both have the same name?
Viola and Olivia: Is it mere coincidence that their names are nearly anagrams of
each other? That they both lost a brother? That theyre both love interests for
Orsino? That violets are feminine symbols of modesty and faithfulness, whereas
Olivia is a barely-feminised version of Oliver?
Two-facedness
Is the importance of differentiating between truth and falsehood particularly apt
being performed before lawyers?
Cloying appetite
How does this theme fit in with the performance setting and title, with 6 th January
being the last day in a series of festivities that officially started on Halloween?
Thats a lot of cakes and ale.
Show versus reality
Dress-up 1: Why does Feste have to dress up as Sir Topaz when he goes in to
Malvolio? Its dark in there, theres no point. Later he simply changes his voice, in
the dark, when everything is a bit Waiting for Godot. Note the similarity between

Twelfth Night Discussion Questions: Page 2 of 2


counterfeiting madness and having madness heaped upon them Hamlet,
anyone?
Dress-up 2: Viola, being shipwrecked, immediately plans to effectively cloister
herself. First shed like to work for Viola, until she can show the world what her
estate is. Why would this be the case? Surely if youre stranded, you show your
identity, you say, hey Ive got lands at home, could you please provide me with
necessities with an IOU? Why is this not possible? Ok so its a plot device,
otherwise we wouldnt have the fun of seeing all the dressup confusion. Is
Olivias weird mourning then simply a lubricant for helping us believe that Viola
would pretend to be a man (i.e. its the same kind of cloistering after a loss?) The
dress-up situation obviously disturbed the Lambs considerably. But then we have
effectively Dress-up 3, with Sebastian having told (for some reason) Antonio that
his name was Rodrigo. Here even the boy is fearing what? Ransom demands?
Its very lightly glossed over.
Misrule and Active versus Passive
Viola instantly reckons she ought to provide for herself by taking service,
whereas (elsewhere) Sebastian wanders off to town presumably entirely reliant
on Antonios purse. She is active, he is passive (again remember the Plautus
original of two sides of one person). Violas forms the plan to marry Orsino the
moment she lands: hes toast from the moment she hears about him. Sebastian
falls into the sexual bounty inadvertently created by his sister, and in his
dealings with Antonio hes entirely the passive, not the active party. Both
characters are androgynous, and both have strongly romantic relations with both
sexes.
How does this melding of character and dividing it back up into two mixed
up halves fit in with the theme of topsy-turvey and misrule?
How does the inappropriate lusting of Malvoilo for his mistress and Olivias
inappropriate lusting after Cesario fit in with this too?

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