Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in the early 1600’s. This comedy was written for the entertainment of the close of the Christmas season. Twelfth Night includes musical interludes as well as extreme disorder through out the entire play. Many plot elements from Twelfth Night have been taken from the short story of Of Apollonius and Silla by Barnabe Rich. The first live performance of this Shakespeare comedy took place on February 2, 1602 at Candlemas, however, this play was not published until 1623. The play opens to Duke Orsino fantasizing about his love for Olivia. However, Olivia has locked herself in her home for the next seven years in order to mourn for the passing of her brother and refuses to get involved with any man during this time. Meanwhile, Viola washes up on the Illyrian shore after her ship sinks and believes that her brother Sebastian has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a young boy (Cesario) in order to become one of Duke Orsino’s servants. Cesario quickly becomes Ordino’s favorite servant and is sent to Olivia’s house in order to put in a good work for Orsino. During this time Viola disguised as Cesario realizes that she herself is in love with Orsino and to make matters worse, Olivia ends up falling for Cesario without realizing that she is a girl disguised as a boy. Soon Cesario returns to deliver a love trinket to Olivia from Duke Orsino, during this visit Olivia admits that she hass fallen for Cesario. Soon enough, Sebastian returns and Olivia quickly mistakes him for Cesario and asks him to marry her. Sebastian is confused because he has never seen her before, however, he agrees to this proposal because she is beautiful and rich. Soon Cesario drops her disguise as a young boy and Duke Orsino asks Viola to marry him as soon as she gets out of her disguise as a young boy. When I first began reading this play I wasn’t entertained much by it because it seemed very slow moving in the beginning. However, as