Blog #10: Twelfth Night (Act III-V) & Final Blog & Event

The second half of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night ties everything together and solves the problem of love triangles and mistaken identities. Before I go into the rest of Twelfth Night, I’d like to discuss my participation in Take Back the Night’s shirt day, where I wore a shirt that said 1 in 4. I bring this up because it fits in perfectly with mistaken identity. Wearing a shirt like that and having people not know why makes them wonder things. I had some people ask me if I was the statistic, mistaken identity. It made me feel awkward because it was such a serious topic and for one to just straight up ask me was really strange. People defiantly looked at me differently. I don’t know if it was just them reading my shirt and wondering or if it was them wondering what I had been through. Wearing this shirt called attention to me, but not in the best light.

This goes right along with the attention being called to Viola even though she would eventually have to come out as not being a man. However, towards the next few scenes her brother who she thought was dead comes back and is constantly being mistaken for Viola. This leads to him being in fights and him falling in love with Olivia. This works out very well for him because Olivia is already in love with Viola and since they are twins, she has no idea that there was ever a change.

On the side of Viola, she finally comes clean about her true identity. The Duke then realizes his feelings for her and they end up in a relationship. Probably one of the most stable relationships that is formed throughout this entire play because of the true relationship and love for each other they had as just friends. Along with those couple, a relationship between Toby and Maria form over their love of practical jokes. Toby has always had a thing for Maria but this common factor brought them together. Thus leaving Malvolio, alone in his misery and powerless.

This semester has been extremely fun. The poems and short stories we read were all very fun to read and defiantly kept me at my attention. Throughout the semester my love for deciphering poems grew. It started out as a hassle but then became like a game or puzzle to me. This class has made my appreciation for poetry go up very much. Before this I had hated poetry because I could never get the right message across but now it’s pretty much a breeze.

The events were fun to attend and connecting them to the readings were also like a puzzle. And it made me dig deeper into the stories and events so that I could find a common denominator. Overall I really enjoyed my time in this class.