Twelfth Night: Writer's Methods and Techniques (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

Twelfth Night: Writer's Methods and Techniques

The most successful GCSE responses discuss the importance of the language, form and structure techniques that Shakespeare uses to create meaning. Both the extract and essay question will reward detailed discussion of technical features, and the essay question requires you to take a “whole-text” approach by drawing on evidence from across the play.

The categories below will help you to refer to evidence from the text for every point that you make, and explain how the use of specific techniques affects the audience.

• Language techniques 

• Forms of speech 

• Comedic form

Language techniques 

Shakespeare’s witty language in Twelfth Night always lends itself to fruitful analysis, and should be one of the first things you consider for both your essay and extract question responses. Think of “language” not only in terms of the meanings of the words that Shakespeare uses, but how his language choices tie into things like characterisation, the overarching narrative, and the broader themes of the play. Look for techniques such as figurative language, symbolism, and puns and innuendo for an easy way into accessing the ideas that underlie the wider play.

• Characters frequently use figurative language, especially in the forms of similes and metaphors, to discuss ideas related to love and romance:

  • Male characters, such as Sir Toby and Orsino, use metaphors related to hunting to reflect the obsessive qualities of love:

    • Sir Toby describes Maria as “a beagle, true bred, and one that adores me” (Act 2, Scene 3), a metaphor suggesting that she has hunted him relentlessly

    • Orsino describes his passions for Olivia as like “fell and cruel hounds” that he cannot escape (Act 1, Scene 1)

    • Hunting was a popular pastime for men of a high status and these images imply a competitive element to romantic relationships

• Twelfth Night is also full of comparisons that use natural imagery to give the play a pastoral quality:

  • Metaphors related to nature are, however, often bittersweet:

    • In Act 2, Scene 4, Orsino likens women to “roses” to argue that their beauty fades as soon as they are “displayed”

    • His comparison shows the audience that his attitude to love is superficial, as he seems only concerned with appearances 

    • This does not bode well for his eventual marriage to Viola: he fell in love with her, after all, while she was disguised as a man

  • Feste’s song that ends the play compares the fallibility of human beings to “the wind and the rain” (Act 5, Scene 1), concluding events on a note of thoughtful melancholy

• Symbolism is central to the play’s narrative, especially with regards to clothing:

  • Twelfth Night uses clothing to play with the commonly-held belief during Shakespeare’s era that one’s physical appearance was a visual indication of one’s character:

    • Viola puts on male clothes to be taken for a male, and “Cesario”  is accepted without question, leading to Orsino becoming confused about his own feelings for “him”

    • When Malvolio fantasises about becoming a nobleman in Act 2, Scene 5, he imagines the new clothes that he will have to represent his status as “Count Malvolio”

    • In Act 4, Scene 2 Feste impersonates a nobleman to fool Malvolio, even though Malvolio is in a dark cell and cannot see him

    • Each of these examples suggests that clothes have a significance that transcends their physical function

  • Malvolio is tricked into believing that Olivia finds him attractive when he wears yellow stockings with cross garters, and so resolves to wear these again to impress her:

    • Shakespeare’s audience would have believed this appearance to be deeply unfashionable, and indicative of Malvolio’s bad taste and foolishness

    • His readiness to believe Maria’s trick also indicates how out of touch he (and the Puritan sect that he represents) is

• As with all Shakespearean comedies, Twelfth Night contains innuendo and puns:

  • These jokes entertain the audience, and also often reveal characters’ true motivations:

    • Malvolio’s description of the letter from “Olivia” praises her “C’s, her U’s and her T’s” (inadvertently spelling a lewd term for “vagina”), followed by her “great P’s” (a pun about urination)

    • The crudity of these jokes makes Malvolio seem clueless, but also perhaps implies that he already views Olivia in terms of her sexual availability

    • The humour therefore also adds to the growing sense that he is a hypocrite

  • In Act 5, Scene 1, Olivia tells Cesario to “Take thy fortunes up”, a double entendre:

    • Olivia indicates that marriage to her has granted Cesario access to greater wealth and power 

    • “Up” may also be a lewd reference to Olivia planning to enjoy their wedding night

    • The innuendo reflects Olivia’s sexual agency and headstrong characterisation

Forms of speech 

It is always important to comment on the form of Shakespeare’s speeches. Not only does the flow of language help to keep the audience engaged, it also conveys meaning and reveals information about characters. Shakespeare switches frequently between verse and prose in Twelfth Night; approximately 60% of the play is in prose, which creates a conversational style, and 40% is in poetic verse. The highest-mark exam responses will be able to explain how Shakespeare uses these different speech styles to create different effects.

• In drama, blank verse is traditionally assigned to characters of noble bearing or important status:

  • Blank verse consists of unrhymed iambic pentameters (five pairs of unstressed/stressed syllables)

  • Blank verse is especially appropriate to speeches about love: the iambic rhythm replicates the sound of a heartbeat:

    • The poetic style of verse also emphasises comparative imagery, such as similes and metaphors

  • The play opens with a perfect example of verse being used in a poetic and emotionally appropriate manner:

    • Orsino’s speech beginning “If music be the food of love, play on” uses traditionally romantic verse to establish an apt tone for a speech about unrequited love

    • The rhythm also draws attention to the opening metaphor of music as food 

• Shakespeare sometimes pairs lines of blank verse in rhyming couplets, which often gives a sense of conclusion to the end of a scene:

  • The use of rhyming couplets is also used in Twelfth Night to emphasise relationships between characters:

    • Towards the end of Act 3, Scene 1, for example, Olivia finally openly declares her love for Cesario in a rhyming couplet

    • In response, Viola, picks up on the rhyming pattern in a way that emphasises how futile Olivia’s hopes are 

• Shakespeare uses prose, written to be spoken in an unstructured, conversational style, for most of the play:

  • Prose speeches in Twelfth Night tend to develop plot points and reveal important information about characters:

    • In Act 1, Scene 5, for example, Olivia speaks in prose as she offers an eloquent description of Malvolio’s character

    • At the end of Act 2, Scene 5, informal prose is appropriate to the way that Maria, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew revel in the success of their trick on Malvolio  

Comedic Form

Twelfth Night is a Shakespearean comedy, full of love, music, trickery and merry-making. However, comedies also often feature interpersonal conflicts or elements of tragedy that create tension or heighten the moments of levity through contrast. In order to demonstrate a “sophisticated” understanding of the writer’s craft and methods, it is important that your exam responses show a firm grasp of the conventions of the genre. The following features are all important components of a Shakespearean comedy:

• Love and marriage: Comedies generally tend to have love and marriage as a central theme:

  • Typically, weddings are seen as symbols of happiness and new beginnings

  • Twelfth Night ends with the promise of multiple marriages, tying together the main plot (Orsino and Viola; Olivia and Sebastian) and the subplot (via Sir Toby’s proposal to Maria)

    • Due to the role played by disguise and mistaken identity in these relationships, the audience is given cause to question how harmonious the marriages may ultimately be

• Mistaken identity: Twelfth Night, as with all Shakespearean comedies, derives humour from misunderstandings and misinterpretations and disguises and the fluidity of identity are central to its plot:

  • Viola is the primary cause of most misunderstanding in the main plot; her disguise as Cesario tricks Orsino, Olivia, and Antonio:

    • Through Viola, Shakespeare uses identity confusion, a central tenet of the comedy genre, to comment on social class, gender, and sexuality 

  • In the subplot, Maria impersonates Olivia’s handwriting in order to dupe Malvolio:

    • The deception reveals Malvolio’s true hypocritical nature

  • Shakespeare uses dramatic irony for comic effect:

    • For example, Olivia’s whirlwind romance with, and swift marriage to, Sebastian is made all the more humorous by the audience’s knowledge that Olivia believes Sebastan to be Cesario

• The presence of Fools: In Shakespeare’s comedies this allows for parody and further misunderstandings, especially where they comment on the action of the play:

  • Feste’s involvement, for example, helps to create sympathy for Olivia and gives the audience reason to laugh at Malvolio

• Happy denouement: All Shakespearean comedies have happy endings, with at least one marriage:

  • The three marriages, followed by song and dancing, represent a happy conclusion:

    • However, Feste’s final song about human fallibility and “the wind and the rain” ends the play on an oddly downbeat note 

    • This bittersweet tone perhaps implies that Shakespeare wants his audience to consider more deeply the implications of the final pairings

    • As Olivia, in truth, first fell in love with a woman, and Orsino fell in love with a man, can their marriages truly be happy? Or are they both fooling themselves?