Twelfth Night Essay

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AS A ROMANTIC COMEDY (International) “Twelfth Night” is the most popular comedy by William Shakespeare who is the greatest poet and dramatist of English Literature. According to Brandes: “Twelfth Night is perhaps the most graceful and harmonious comedy Shakespeare ever wrote……” It is a combination of romance and comedy, i.e a mingling of certain romantic elements and certain comic elements where the theme of love with its myriad manifestations and varied shapes and shades is at the centre of “Twelfth Night” and the over lapping of the comic underplot of Malvolio, Maria, Sir Andrew and Sir Toby with the serious main plot of Duke Orsino, Viola, Olivia and Sebastian is cast within the framework of a romantic comedy. The central action of this play concerns dancing, feasting and love-making because the chief concern of the characters figuring in this comedy is to move love and to enjoy life to the fullest. That’s why Thorndiae has summed up this comedy by saying that: “ Here to live is to love and to love is to live romantically.” So, the typical Shakespearean comedy, specially the romantic comedy is primarily soaked in an atmosphere where everything is fantastic, strange and uncommon accompanied by fun and frolic, mirths and follity, music and dance. Apart from giving fanciful and romantic atmosphere, the play also gives us the realistic background under which the two principal episodes of the play function. The main plot and the sub plot are skillfully woven love stories having the realistic touch. Sir Toby humours Sir Andrew to fleece him of his money. Malvolio loves Olivia with a view of becoming count Malvolio. Maria marries Sir Toby in order to get his rank and position. Thus the painful reality of life is never absent in the play. According to Furnival, “Twelfth Night” is in many respects a mirror of England in
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