If you missed class on Friday, we watched Act 1 from a modern version (2018) of Twelfth Night, which had modern dress and locations, though of course it preserved Shakespeare's language. If you want to see a modern authentic version, here's a link to the Globe production of 2013, with Elizabethan dress and performance standards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnnmKxICYvM
Read Act 1 for Monday and answer two of the following questions (or 1, in more sufficient detail):
Q1: As Shakespeare goes on in his career, he starts to use prose much more often, especially in his comedies. Who speaks prose in Twelfth Night and why might this be? What does prose allow him to say/express with certain characters and their language?
Q2: Twelfth Night is also the first play in this class where we meet a distinct Shakespearean character (of which Bottom and Puck are distantly related), the Fool. In this play, the Fool (sometimes called Feste) has a very unique relationship with the woman he serves, Olivia. What does this relationship seem to be? Is he her servant? And if so, why does he insult her? Does she like him, or just tolerate him?
Q3: We hear many echoes of The Sonnets in Act 1, most notably when Orsino tells the cross-dressing Viola that "They say thou art a man. Diana's lip/Is not more smooth and rubious, thy small pipe/Is as the maiden's organ" (25). Where else did you hear these echoes and how might knowing the Sonnets behind them change how we read the scene?
Q4: Read the exchange between Viola and Olivia in 1.5 carefully. Where and why does their language change? We know that Olivia is smitten with Viola, but is this attraction mutual? How should we stage this interaction based on the language and what they say to one another?
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