Chaos and Order in Twelfth Night - 2766 Words

The only reference to Twelfth Night during Shakespeare’s own lifetime is to a performance on February 2, 1602. A law student named John Manningham wrote in his diary about a feast he attended at the Middle Temple in London where he was a law student and where â€Å"we had a play called Twelfth Night; Or, What You Will. This was likely to have been an early performance since it is generally agreed that the play was probably written in 1601. In 1954 Sir Leslie Hotson’s book, The First Night of Twelfth Night, sought to identify the exact date of the first performance of Twelfth Night. He used the evidence of old records to suggest that Queen Elizabeth asked for a new play for the last night of the Christmas 1600-01 season, the Feast of the†¦show more content†¦Society cannot function normally because the extremes of social and religious life depicted by Sir Toby Belch and Malvolio cannot co-exist. The cause of the underlying despondency is the way in which Illyrian society works in reverse to social norms. This reversal is linked closely with the festivities of Twelfth Night. The central idea of Twelfth Night was derived from the old notion behind Saturnalia: a brief social revolution or period of misrule in which power, dignity, or impunity is reversed upon those ordinarily in a subordinate position so that masters become servants and servants become masters. A mock figure known as the Carnival King or Boy-Bishop was elected to head the festivities; a figure echoed in Twelfth Night both by Sir Toby Belch, who becomes a kind of carnival king upholding the feasting, revelry and license of the festival period, and by Feste who impersonates a clergyman in his attempts to re-educate Malvolio into his right mind. When challenged about his drinking by Maria; â€Å"Ay but you must confine yourself within the limits of order,† Sir Toby retorts, â€Å"Confine! I ll confine myse lf no finer than I am. In the true style of Saturnalia, Sir Toby overturns all norms. He almost literally turns night into day through his apparently continuous drinking:Show MoreRelated Essay on Twelfth Night: A Gender-Bending Journey1574 Words   |  7 PagesTwelfth Night: A Gender-Bending Journey      Ã‚   Shakespeare enjoyed writing passionate plays about young lovers, but, after a while, the formula became exhausted and the Bard was forced to dig deeper, creatively speaking. Twelfth Night is an example of a Shakespearean love tale with a slight twist to keep things interesting. This play was the â€Å"Tootsie† of its time. Twelfth Night takes the audience on a gender-bending journey, while maintaining all the elements of true love throughout. 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