“Let Me See Your Face:” Analyzing the Theme of Deception in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

“Let Me See Your Face:” Analyzing the Theme of Deception in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

  • Submitted By: oechalia
  • Date Submitted: 01/07/2016 1:18 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 2124
  • Page: 9


In the literature of Shakespeare, there is one recurring theme in particular that readers and theatregoers alike are sure to encounter. In King Lear, Goneril and Regan demonstrate this particular theme clearly by way of their elaborate declarations of love and dedication to their father, the title character of the play, in order to receive his gift of a third of his kingdom following his passing. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fairy Puck exhibits this particular theme when using the voice of Lysander to incite Demetrius to chase him around the forest to fight for his right to pursue Helena while implementing the same tactic on Lysander for the same purpose. Of all of Shakespeare’s dramatic work, however, one play that simply could not function without the presence of this recurring Shakespearian theme is Twelfth Night, Or What You Will (herein abbreviated as Twelfth Night). The theme in discussion is that of deception, or the act of one character in a play manipulating his or her counterparts through trickery in order to achieve a certain goal. Let us therefore closely examine Twelfth Night to characterize this recurring theme in Shakespeare, to analyze how this theme is implemented in this particular work, and finally, to attempt to understand why or why not implementing this theme works well in a piece of dramatic literature.
Towards the beginning of Twelfth Night in Act I, Scene 2, the reader is introduced to the fair Viola, who is sailing along the coast of a country known as Illyria with the company of a Captain and a few sailors, all presumably in some kind of life preservation raft used following a disastrous shipwreck. In the context of this scene, the reader learns much of character of Viola as well as of other characters that have been and have yet to be introduced themselves, principally those of Orsino, Duke of Illyria, and Olivia, a countess of the same country. When Viola inquires the Captain as to their whereabouts, he responds that...

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