Twelfth Night Comedy Analysis

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“Twelfth Night” is a comedy written by William Shakespeare, in which the central theme is love. The readers are presented with the classic form of comedy that includes the following elements: separation at the beginning, humorous and absurd situations between the characters, and marriage(s) at the end. Nevertheless, the author also incorporated ingredients distinctive of the tragedy. For instance, there are several sad scenes and some of them are even bordering on cruelty. Furthermore, some of the characters (even some of the good ones like Antonio) did not get their happy ending. Some of the despondent content of Twelfth Night creates a problematic situation on the way people see the comedy as a genre. Readers tend to instinctively classify …show more content…

He shows how vulnerable people are and how much they rely on love to achieve fulfillment. Since love is an emotion and these are hard to control, humans are almost helpless when it comes to it. In the quest for love we become mad like Malvolio, hopeless like Orsino, helpless like Viola and depressed like Olivia. All of these feeling are suitable for a tragedy. However, Shakespeare chooses very often to use them for his comedies. Readers can even see a similarity between Twelfth Night and the Merchant of Venice. In the last one every aspect of the play hints towards a tragedy, but it is considered a comedy because it ends with a wedding. Shakespearian comedies differ a bit to the regular comedies, but they are nevertheless still considered as such. Shakespeare has a special way of handling the plots in order to keep the audience guessing. This is one of the main reasons why he still manages to surprise us even today in ways that probably the Greeks and the French never have. Aristotle defines comedy as “an imitation of men that are worse than the average” Since we are dealing with normal people and the problems they might have, we cannot expect a perfect outcome for everybody in all aspects at the end of a play. If life was perfect we will probably not have a need for comedies. These situations and characters are there to helps us appreciate what is really happening in the

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