How Does Shakespeare Explore Human Folly in Twelfth Night?

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In this play twelfth night, Shakespeare illustrate the folly and madness of the festive period after Christmas. He uses many characters to show and demonstrate how excessive the madness is and how much stupidity goes on. He also uses the title and its significance to help the reader understand what human folly is, and how it relates to the play. Shakespeare uses the title of the play to makes us know of what is to come in the play. The title of the play, Twelfth Night, is the reference to the 12 days of Christmas which is the festive and fun season. It begins on the 25th of December and ends on the 5th of January. During these twelve days, people during Shakespeare’s time, spent them drinking, and partying, which often led to folly and excessive behaviour. The title then suggests a night of human folly, the biggest night of them all, the Twelfth night. Shakespeare also explores human folly, by using the characters, all characters have an excessive behaviour, all except Viola and her brother and of course Feste, whom is supposed to be the fool. They all display a folly, which are all human qualities and virtues, but these are all taken to extremes by the characters and this is how Shakespeare explores and makes us discover human folly. For example: -Count Orsino displays excessive love by stupidly, blindly loving Olivia. We know this from the opening scene of the play where Count Orsino claims to madly in love with Olivia, he keeps announcing his love for Olivia by singing and listening to music all day. He says ‘’ If music be the food of love play on-Give me excess of it, that surfeiting-The appetite may sicken and so die’’ (Act 1 Scene 1) He acts like a fool, spending all his time thinking about Olivia, he does not even try and seduce her himself as he only sends messengers to make her know of his ‘’passionate
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