The Twelfth Night and The Duchess of Malfi are very different works. The Twelfth
Night is very much a comedy, with a bit of tragedy and the Duchess is very tragic. The characters in Twelfth Night are overly dramatic and very interested in social
status and courtly love. The characters in Twelfth Night are very silly and devious, such as the joke that
Maria plays on Malvolio by forging a note to make Malvolio believe that, Olivia
who is of a higher social class is in love with him. In the Twelfth
Night, the play is about finding love or pining for a woman or man that the
characters believe that they are in love with because of their social status
rather than their personality.
I find that the two plays have some things in common. The Twelfth
Night, and The Duchess of Malfi,
social status seems to be very important.
In The Duchess, the Duchess’
brothers are very controlling. The
duchess brothers do not want their widowed sister to wed again, to produce an
heir and lose their control of their kingdom.
The duchess does find love with what is considered a commoner and
because of his social status, she has to wed him in secret. She like some of the characters in Twelfth Night has found true love and
has wed because she wants too and not for any kind of social status.
In Twelfth Night,
the women are very strong willed and have a voice. Viola who does dress up as a man during some
of the play to be able to work for the Duchess Olivia, because of the loss of
Olivia’s brother she has refused to see any guests. So in order to work for Olivia Viola has
decided to dress as a man to woo her in the name of the Duke Orsino who has
decided that he is in love with Olivia. In
the end, she professed her love for the Duke Orsino, “And all those sayings I
will overswear / And all those swearings keep as true in soul / As doth that
orbed continent the fire / that severs day from night” (5.1 267-69) and that
love was in fact reciprocated “Give me thy hand, / And let me see thee in thy
womans weeds” (5.1 270-71) and because of their equal social status, it was not
something that created a scandal.
In The Duchess of
Malfi however, the duchess does not seem to have any kind of strong will or
voice. The duchess is very afraid of her
brothers and society. That is why she
kept her secret. She does however like
her title as Duchess or she would have renounced it, which gives the title of
Duke to one of her brothers and became a commoner, to live with her husband
Antonio and raise her children.
Both of the plays set the scene to give me an idea of
what life was like for the English of the sixteenth and seventeenth
century. Women were very repressed and
social status was worth everything to people.
The Duchess of Malfi and Twelfth Night also has the ruthless
power hungry people among them and their court.
In Twelfth Night, those
characters were played as silly and playful, such as Maria and her joke on Malvolio. In The Duchess of Malfi, the
ruthless characters were very evil, in the end played a cruel joke on the
duchess, and ended up killing her and two out of her three children. In the end the duchess showed grace in the
face of death, “What would it pleasure me to have my throat cut/ With
diamonds? Or to be smothered? / With cassia? Or to be shot to death with pearls? / […]
Tell my brothers/ That I perceive death,
now I am well awake, / Best gift is they can give or I can take. (4.2 line 194-203) and accepted it like a
true duchess. She knew her kids were
dead and thought her beloved was also, and she wanted to be rid of the politics
and drama that her current life had to offer and she looked forward to moving
on with her family. In the end, she was
very noble and courageous and showed the love of her husband no matter his
station in life, and her children were the most important things to her. When she died, her death was her voice.
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