Name:
Cristina Camps Pérez.
Teacher:
Vicente Fores.
Group:
B.
DIFFERENCES
AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN The Comedy Of Errors and Twelfth Night.
INDEX:
1.- Introduction.
2.- Information about the
plays.
3.- Differences and similarities between The comedy of errors and Twelfth Night.
4.- Conclusion.
5.- Bibliography.
1
INTRODUCTION:
In this paper, I am going to write about The comedy of errors and Twelfth Night. I have chosen these two plays by
Shakespeare because they have a common point, in both The comedy of errors and Twelfth Night, the author uses twins to
be the main character of these plays. I will divide this paper in three parts:
information about the plays; a comparison between the two plays, if the author
uses this resource in the same way
or in another different; and finally the conclusion.
In the first part of the paper, I will give information about the plays,
their first representation, etc. that will help us to see better some of the
differences between one play and the other. What I want to analyse is the
importance of these characters in these plays, why twins and not simple
brothers, what the author can do with these twins that can not do without them.
In my opinion that Shakespeare used twins for some reason, not just because he
had the idea, and I also think that, in some way, he used them in a different
way in each play. Although they have features in common, I think they are not
exactly the same, each pair of twins is used to express something different or
perhaps they are expressing the same but from a different point of view. For
this, I will use information taken from the internet in order to give examples
and also information and not going to use in the paper but that I have used to
better understand the play.
2
INFORMATION
ABOUT THA PLAYS:
Here I am going to give some extra
information about the plays to better understand the differences between the two
plays, because in my opinion, some of the differences are more for the
experience of the author and not made consciously.
The Comedy of Errors is one of
the earliest Shakespeare plays, perhaps it was his first play, written around
1592-1594, although other critics say it was written between 1589 and 1594. But
it was not printed until 1623. This play shows a reference to the wars of
succession in
(www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_Of_Errors)
(www.enotes.com/comedy-errors)
Twelfth Night, also called What You Will, is a reference to the
twelfth night after the Christmas Day and was possibly written around 1600-1601.
Shakespeare was inspired by a Italian nobleman, who
visited
(www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night)
3
DIFFERENCES
AND SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE COMEDY OF
ERRORS AND TWELFTH
NIGHT:
In this part of the paper, I am going to compare the two plays and
analyse the possible reason to their similarities and to their differences and I
will try to give examples from the text.
The first similarity and, in my opinion the most important, is the use of
twins. In The comedy of errors, there
are two couples of twins (Antipholus and Dromio) and in Twelfth Night, there is only one
(Sebastian and Cesario/Viola) but the way of using
them is almost the same. In both plays, The comedy of errors and Twelfth Night, all the couple of twins
are men although in Twelfth Night is
actually a man and a woman, but do not know it until the end of the play, so we
can say that they are both men. In these two plays, Shakespeare uses the most
simple strategy to make us laugh that is makes the audience know more than the
characters of the play. For this he uses double identity through the using of
twins. Now, I am going to show one example of this confusion of identity in
The comedy of errors to show how this
confusion of identity can create the funniest scenes when Antipholus ask Dromio about the
money he gave Dromio:
4
“Antipholus:
Stop
in your wind, sir: tell me this, I pray:
Where have you left the money that I gave
you?
O,--sixpence,
that I had o' Wednesday last
To pay the saddler for my mistress'
crupper?
The saddler had it, sir; I kept it
not.
Antipholus:
I
am not in a sportive humour now:
Tell me, and dally not, where is the money?
We
being strangers here, how darest thou trust
So great a charge from thine own custody?”
(http://shakespeare.mit.edu/comedy_errors/full.html)
But in this excerpt we also find another characteristic of this play that
we can not find in Twelfth Night, the
way the characters speak. In The comedy
of errors, the characters speak very fast, what makes that sometimes you or
the other characters get lost and this create very funny scenes. But in Twelfth Night, the characters seem to
speak more slowly, more relaxed. This is, perhaps, because when Shakespeare
wrote the first one, he was about twenty-five or twenty-seven and he made a
comedy full of errors that based his strategy to make fun in a simple sense of
humour, in simple things as double identity. But in the second one, he was older
and had wrote more plays before it so he had more experience and he had
developed his strategy to make people laugh and he used more complex situations
and characters.
(class notes 11/06/07)
5
Another similarity could be that
both plays deal with the subject of the relations between men and women, which
is a common feature of Shakespeare plays. In Twelfth Night, this is the main plot, we
do not see confusion of identity until the end, when the both, brother and
sister met again or when Antonio and Cesario meet foe
the first time and Antonio thinks Cesario is
Sebastian. During the rest of the play we only see the relation between the men
and the women that appear in the play such as Maria and Toby, Olivia and Malvolio or Olivia and Cesario,
although Cesario is a man but none of the characters
know it. However, in The comedy of errors, the strategy of
confusing identity is the most important of the play and we find it through all
the play. This subject is as important as the relations between men and women in
this play. We also could say that the problems that men and women have in their
relations here are cause by the confusion of the identities meanwhile in Twelfth Night, they are caused not only
by this but by something more complex as the real identity of Cesario. In Twelfth
Night, we also see how appearances can trick us, how a women, in this case, can be
another person, a man, just changing her image through the make up and dressing.
(class
notes 11/27/07)
The next similarity I would like to mention here is the location of the
plays. Both The comedy of errors and
Twelfth Night are located in exotics
places, the first one in
(class
notes 09/27/07)
6
Another similarity I am going to mention is that in both plays we find
several love relations between the characters, not only the one of the main
characters. In The comedy of errors,
we find the relation between Antipholus of Ephesus and
Adriana in a mian plot, Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana, Egeon (Father of both Antipholus ) and Emilia
(Antipholus’ mother) and Dromio of Syracuse and Luce in a subplot. In Twelfth Night, we find in a main plot
the relation between Olivia and Cesario/Viola and in a
subplot the relation between Duke Orsino and Olivia,
who does not love him; Duke Orsino and Cesario/Viola, which is a friendship relation but at the end
ends in a love relation; the relation between Sebastian and Olivia; between
Olivia and Malvolio which is just based in the sexual
attraction of Malvolio for Olivia that ends in
punishment for him because she does not live him and also because at that age
society punish everyone who show his/her sexual desire for another person; and
the relation between Maria and Toby. For all this, I also want to say that we
can say that the relations showed in both plays are more complex in Twelfth Night rather than in The comedies of errors because also the
situation of the characters in one play is more complex than in the
other.
(class
notes 11/27/07)
7
In both plays we find strong women
that do not need anybody to talk for them. Here the problem is not created
because there is a father that has chosen for her with who she has to marry,
here they chose what they want to do with their lives. In The comedy of errors, Adriana is a
strong woman who does not tolerate the possible relations her husband has with
other women and is able to speak up and to face him as we see
here:
“By ruffian
lust should be contaminate!
Wouldst thou not spit at me and spurn at me
And hurl the name of husband in my face
And
tear the stain'd skin off my harlot-brow
And from my false hand cut the wedding-ring
And break it with a deep-divorcing vow?
I
know thou canst; and therefore see thou do it.
I am
possess'd with an adulterate blot;
My blood is mingled with the crime of lust:
For if we too be one and thou play false,
I
do digest the poison of thy flesh,
Being strumpeted by thy contagion.
Keep then far league and truce with thy true bed;
I live unstain'd, thou undishonoured.”
(http://shakespeare.mit.edu/comedy_errors/full.html)
(www.enotes.com/comedy-errors)
We also see a strong woman in Twelfth Night in the character of
Olivia, a woman that is her own boss and can do what she wants without anybody
saying her what she has to do. We see it through all
the text but one example could be when Malvolio goes
to talk with Olivia believing she is in love with her and she rejects
him:
“MALVOLIO
Smilest
thou?
I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.
Sad,
lady! I could be sad: this does make some
obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering; but
what of that? if it please the eye of one, it is
with me as the very true sonnet is, 'Please one, and
please all.'
Why,
how dost thou, man? what
is the matter with thee?
Not
black in my mind, though yellow in my legs. It
did come to his hands, and commands shall be
executed: I think we do know the sweet Roman
hand.
OLIVIA
Wilt
thou go to bed, Malvolio?
To
bed! ay,
sweet-heart, and I'll come to thee.
(http://shakespeare.mit.edu/twelfth_night/full.html)
The next thing I would like to
mention, and related to the last thing I have written, is that, in contrast with
his other comedies, here the conflict does not start because there is a father
that forbid his daughter to get married with the man she loves. Here, because of
these strong women that, in some way are alone because
they do not
9
have a father telling her what to do, they can
choose if they want to get married and with who. Here, the conflict starts
because of the confusion of identities. In The comedy
of errors, just between the two pairs of twins, but in
Twelfth Night, not only between the
twins but also with Viola because everybody thinks she is a man (Cesario) but she is actually a woman.
The last thing I am going to mention
is that in both comedies we can find one common characteristic of Shakespeare
plays that is love at first sight. This characteristic, love at first sight,
appears in both comedies between the main characters. In The comedy of errors, between Antipholus of Syracuse and Liciana; and in Twelfth Night, between Olivia and Cesario and after knowing he was a woman (Viola) between
Olivia and Sebastian and, in some way, between Viola and Duke Orsino, but she cannot show her love for him until they
discover she is a woman and then, Duke Orsino falls in
love with her. With all this, what Shakespeare wants to show us is, again, that
appearances can trick us as I have said before. Here, the characters are not
able to distinguish one twin from the other, in some way because they do not
know anything about the existence of any twin. To explain this, I am going to
use an example. Olivia, falls in love with Cesario but
when she knows he is a woman, Olivia goes on her relation with Sebastian (the
Viola’s twin) who she did not know because when they get married, was the first
time they met. What I want to say is that Olivia loves Cesario and
Sebastian just for their aspect and
when Olivia knows who Cesario is, she does not matter because she has Sebastian, who is equal
to Cesario.
(class
notes 11/27/07)
10
CONCLUSION:
To sum up, I have to say that these two plays share several common
characteristics of Shakespeare plays such as love at first sight or strong
female characters but also specific characteristics that belong just to them as
the use of twins to create identity confusion. We have seen how Shakespeare uses
it to make us laugh with a very simple humour, in The comedy of errors, or with a more
complex humour as in Twelfth Night,
but with the same feature (the usage of twins); how he uses several love stories
in order to create more conflicts; or how he show us how appearances can trick
us, how a person can change and become another just with changing his or her
image.
In my view, this two plays are ones of the best Shakespeare comedies
because they can make laugh us and also show us problems not only of his
society, but also of our because even nowadays we find people that only want to
get power through marriage like Malvolio. But what the
author teach us is that the status of each person could not change and that even
now appearances continue tricking us.
11
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
1.- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_Of_Errors
Home:
<en.wikipedia.org> (12/20/07)
2.- www.enotes.com/comedy-errors
Home: <www.enotes.com>
(12/20/07)
3.- www.bard.org/education/resources/shakespeare/comedychar.html
Home: <www.bard.org>
(12/20/07)
4.- http://shakespeare.mit.edu/comedy_errors/full.html
Home: <http://shakespeare.mit.edu>
(12/20/07)
5.- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Night
Home:
<en.wikipedia.org> (12/20/07)
6.- www.absolutesshakespeare.com/guides/twelfth_night/characters.htm
Home: <www.absolutesshakespeare.com>
(12/20/07)
7.www.absolutesshakespeare.com/guides/twelfth_night/characters/twelfth_night_characters_essay.htm
Home: <www.absolutesshakespeare.com>
(12/20/07)
8.- http://shakespeare.mit.edu/twelfth_night/full.html
Home: <http://shakespeare.mit.edu>
(12/20/07)
9.- Class notes: 11/27/07, 09/27/07 and
11/06/07.