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The Organic Unity of Twelfth Night

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

There is no agreement among Shakespearian critics with regard to the organic unity of Twelfth Night. Dr. Furnivall in one place believes that “the leading note of the play is fun.” In another place he says less aptly that “the lesson is, sweet are the uses of adversity.” Morton Luce records his “impression that the perfect unity of Twelfth Night lies in the wise good humor that pervades the play.” Schlegel is representative of a group of critics who believe that “love regarded as an affair of the imagination rather than of the heart, is the fundamental theme running through all the variations of the play.” Most commentators, however, have agreed that the leading thought of this play may be discovered in its title; that the words Twelfth Night, or What You Will, are themselves the key-note of the play; that Shakespeare's first thought was to provide a comedy suitable for the festival. No one of these critics has thought that an organic idea has been more than incidental in this creation of pure mirth. So purely comic are its scenes, and so entirely sufficient are all of its incidents, that critics have not gone behind its gay life to look for an underlying moral law.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1914

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References

1 Twelfth Night. Ed. by Morton Luce. P. xxxiv (foot-notes).

2 Ibid.

3 Twelfth Night. Ed. by Morton Luce, p. xxix.

4 Brandes, Shakespeare, vol. 1, p. 273.

5 An Apologie of the Schools of Abuse: Arber Reprint edition, p. 72.

6 A Short Treatise against Stage Playes (1625), p. 241. In English Drama and Stage (Rox. Lib. 1869).

7 Short Treatise against Stage Playes (1625), pp. 240, 241.

8 A Short Treatise against Stage Playes (1625), pp. 240, 241.

9 Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, p. 111.

10 Defense of Poesy. Ed. by A. S. Cook (1890), p. 36.

11 T. Kenny (1864). Furness, Twelfth Wight, p. 382: “There is nothing in his conduct to justify the unscrupulous persecution of his tormentors.”

Wm. Archer, in Furness, Twelfth Night, p. 399: “Punishment excessive to the point of barbarity.”

12 Furness, Twelfth Night, pp. 399, 400.