Twelfth night, or what you will /
Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's most-loved but also most complex comedies. Frequently performed on stage as well as commonly filmed and televised, this play is famously funny but also nuanced, presenting abundant humor of various shades (from slapstick to subtle, raucous to witty) while a...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Ipswich, Massachusetts : Amenia, New York :
Salem Press ; Grey House Publishing,
[2024].
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| Series: | Critical insights.
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| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's most-loved but also most complex comedies. Frequently performed on stage as well as commonly filmed and televised, this play is famously funny but also nuanced, presenting abundant humor of various shades (from slapstick to subtle, raucous to witty) while also presenting nuanced shades of darkness and many reasons for serious reflection. Malvalio, at once the most ridiculous and most abused character in the play, is, for both reasons, often the most memorable; his role has been interpreted and performed in numerous ways, and the play itself has provoked diverse and often conflicting reactions. This volume will explore this notoriously gender-bending comedy from numerous perspectives, offering historical, comparative, stylistic, psychological and philosophical perspectives (among many others) while also examining the ways the work has been performed in various media and eras. This volume, like all the others in the Critical Insights series, is divided into several distinct sections. It begins with several introductory essays (including this one), then presents four contextual essays, then offers ten individual "critical readings" and finally concludes with various "resources" designed to supply readers with further historical and bibliographical information. The volume next offers biographies of the editor and contributors and finally concludes with a comprehensive index of names, titles and topics. The present volume opens with an introductory essay by Nicolas Tredell, a distinguished British scholar, who examines Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night in terms of several different kinds of characters who appear within the play. These include women, tricksters, clod-poles, gulls, clowns and lovers. In particular, Tredell's essay "explores key elements of humor and pathos in Twelfth Night as they emerge in its specific words, actions and situations and feed into its overall themes." He first focuses on the play's "wit and wordplay, as exemplified in the initial duel of wit and words between Maria and Feste, which Maria wins" and then goes on "to consider the kinship between the Fool and the Trickster" before finally exploring "pathos in the play as evoked through the figures of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Malvolio, Antonio and Feste. |
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| Physical Description: | xlii, 294 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-282) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781637007280 1637007280 |