Culd Olivia be the alter ego of Viola?

[jayat]

Both female characters used a name with the same letters (diferent order though), both aren't trapped in anything but love (so they are smart and strong but can't do nothing against Cupido's arrows); both are trapped in a lie: Olivia is stuck in the main idealistic idea of love, so she loves to love; Viola is stuck playing like a man when she's a woman who would like to express her real love to Orsino and can't, what make them human, that is, touchable. Well, you will say.

[prendrelemick]

Not alter ego, which implies they are opposites, but as you go on to say, virtually identical. Their names show us that is Shakespeare's intent.

[Charles Darnay]

There is definitely a connection. But the names are a bit complicated. Yes, Viola is literally in Olivia - but bear in mind that the name Viola does not appear until Act V, scene I (when Caesario is unmasked by Sebastian.) Are the intertwined, or does Viola simply supplant Olivia?

[Jackson Richardson]

Haven't they both lost (or think they've lost in the case of Viola) brothers?

How are they more trapped than anyone else? Malvolio is trapped in a social status when he would have a more prestigious one, Orsino is far more trapped by the idea of being in love than Olivia *, Andrew Agucheek is trapped as Toby Belch's gull, Toby Belch is trapped as Olivia's dependent (not that the outrageous old thing cares a jot), and so on.

* Olivia seems to have more in common with Orsino than Viola. They have parallel social status, they are both melancholy, they are both surrounded by a large household with musicans, both their names begin with O, they both fancy Viola. ( I always think Orsino is a crashing bore. Viola deserves someone better.)

I'm not at all convinced by this similarity of names argument. Having called one character Viola, it made him think of a similar name for the other principal female.

[jayat]

Thamk you for your answers...I get two comments to think about: are both intertwined or supplanting and names similarity is not perhaps a good path to follow.

[jayat]

Not alter ego, which implies they are opposites, but as you go on to say, virtually identical. Their names show us that is Shakespeare's intent.

Thanks for the correction...Yes indeed. Though virtually identical doesn't sound to me like a concept like alter ego does. Actually, I see a relation between the two principal role female characters but I am unable to describe that relation completely under a word concept. Anyway, 'Virtually identical' doesn't satisfy me too much, although is better than alter ego, definetely...

[Jackson Richardson]

Since alter ego means "another I" I don't see why it can't literally mean virtually identical.

[Charles Darnay]

Shakespeare was a calculated writer - and while not adverse to the cheap fart joke, chopping such a similarity in names up to "well, I can't think of anything better, so I'll just re-arrange the letters" does not fit within his schemes. I am not so analytical that there must be meaning in absolutely everything - but this is one thing that can't be so easily written off.

[jayat]

Since alter ego means "another I" I don't see why it can't literally mean virtually identical.

But they are not fully identical. Olivia is a mistress, a lady, and shows herself as a woman, a marriable one who doesn't want to get married, but should. To be exact, Viola is a 'young' woman who shows herself as a boy (Cesario) to carry her porpuses. So, they have got things in common but little differences which makes the story rolls, as if one was the positive pole and the other the negative one but both were the main electricity, untouchable energ.y

[jayat]

Shakespeare was a calculated writer - and while not adverse to the cheap fart joke, chopping such a similarity in names up to "well, I can't think of anything better, so I'll just re-arrange the letters" does not fit within his schemes. I am not so analytical that there must be meaning in absolutely everything - but this is one thing that can't be so easily written off.

I don't think it's a matter of thinking in something better or not, and by no means the one who is the core of the western canon couldn't be there by having written cheap fart jokes asyou say, okey. On the contrary, I think it's a matter of taking the most of everything, of every linguistic resource. As you say again, "there is meaning in absolutely everything". Well, right, in the very little things too. Although they look naive. If the author could impress a immediate relation between the two most significant female characters through first and faoremost their names (Olivia - Viola) why don't use it, fear to be considered less important, by God's light, it's just another drop in his ocean.

[Jackson Richardson]

But other than their names and the loss of a brother and being the two female leads, what is so special about their relationship that it has to be marked by this near anagram? If you could make a good point, then you could support it by reference to the closeness of the names.

Shakespeare may be regarded as part of a constructed canon, but in his lifetime, he was the scriptwriter to a working theatrical company who didn't even prepare his play texts for publication. They were to be acted.

[jayat]

No, at the moment I couldn't make a good point, I just can let the subject spins around in my mind and read it once and again to come to see someting else. Maybe it's nosense but I would keep trying. Good to know the texts were written so straight-to-the-scene...Thanks.

[Jackson Richardson]

I don't think the idea's nonsense at all. The names are similar and there are similarities in their situations (and differences - Viola loses her brother and heroically gets on with life, Olivia loses her brother and maintains her social situation and mopes.) If you could make an argument that there was a connection, the name similarity could be the icing on the cake.

I'm just not convinced it's that important.

[jayat]

Ok, I'll see.

[Jackson Richardson]

Good luck. I haven't written an academic essay for years, so don't mind me. But I think there's a lot in the comparison between Olivia and Viola. I just automatically react against treating Shakespeare as a sacred arcane text.

Olivia's loss of her brother means she is now a woman in a position of considerable social status and power. Maybe she doesn't want to marry Orsino because she will lose that independence. And there was an obvious example of a powerful and independent woman around at the time, although she was in her last years, ie Queen Elizabeth herself.

Incidentally, Twelfth Night is playing here in London in Shaftesbury Avenue (the London Broadway) together with Richard III. Mark Rylance plays both Olivia (it's an all male production) and Richard. I saw him playing Richard, and playing it up for laughs. It was painful.

[jayat]

Well, actually, I'm reading Twelfth Night for the first time in my life. I'm not bred in a english speaking area, bu tin a latin one in the same Europe. Unfortunately, I've been learning quite few things from Shakespeare and munch more from Spanish, Italian and Catalan authors. I discovered W.S. (or this reading choosed me, as it's usually said) a few months by chance. I'm another of his many readers.

I studied language and linguistics but I didn't do the doctorate (PhD?). So I'm no as good in researching as one who did it but I'm really using all my knowledge to learn from the greatest one, without a doubt. I got trapped in the net of his expression, his literary intelligentsia, first of all. The rhetorics are brilliantly achieved. Now it's like eating caviar everyday. In additon, the plot's building, dramatism, characters descriptions all through dialogues, double meanings... What's more, I'm reading from the original. Helped by annotations but not exclusively from a translation (how different it looks the same text, for God's sake). The pleasure is absolute.

Anyway, it will take me a few time to end reading T.N. Time will tell. No more ideas so far.

[Charles Darnay]

Sorry, I've been away for a few days. Again, the idea is not that they are identical, but Viola supplants Olivia when she ceases to be Caesario and becomes Viola. The simplest way to illustrate this would be Orsino's quickly changing whim. He goes from incessantly doting on Olivia to marrying Viola within a few lines (after he tries to have Viola killed of course.)

On a wider scale, there is a gradual shift of power than occurs first in Act I, scene V. As the dialogue moves from prose to verse during their first meeting, we see the powerful Olivia - set up by everyone around her as powerful and unbending - falter in the face of Caesario. Ceasario (sort of) wins over Feste - once so loyal to Olivia. He draws Andrew's focus away from Olivia to himself. In fact, Malvolio (that great oddity) seems to be the only character native to Illyria who is not affected by Caesario.

[Jackson Richardson]

jayat - That's marvellous. I've never managed to read much in any language other than English, and only with a translation to hand. I'm mightily impressed by your reading something in a complex, archaic form of a foreign language. And I'm even more impressed by your enthusiasm.

I studied Twelfth Night for my exams when I was 16, and I have happy memories of it. But there are layers upon layers of complexity, such as Charles D suggests, but still being a popular (in C16 terms) work. Shakespeare may have been just a company scriptwriter, but he was a company scriptwriter of genius.

[jayat]

Well, I finished it. I must first understand and then reflect upon Darnay's words. I should read it again but I think I will move on to Henry V (I have a good Catalan translation). I would let it brew in my mind.

Pay attention there were few examples of genius concentrated in one person in Europe, before Shakespeare times. Ramon Llull (1200 + or -) was one of them. He wrote tenths of books in a language which had yet come out form the latin magma but not still testified, my mother tongue language: catalan. Apart from a literate, a religious man and a philosopher he was the one who set this language onto paper; used, contained, attached to the passage of time, till our days. The first true, large brick (there were some weak, precedent reminiscences) in a thounsand-year-old culture.

It is said his surname, Llull, comes from l'ull, this is, translated, "the eye". Because he just took care in looking carefully what a platoon of "scribas" did for him. So, like in every company there is the workers and also the brain behind, and W.S. could perfectly be a man leading a team group of (not outstanding?) writters. I 'm not sure of W.S. you may correct me.

Happy to share few words.

[Jackson Richardson]

Hello jaypat!

I'm not a scholar so I'm not aware of detailed research, but I didn't mean that WS was heading a team of writers: however I can guess from the way theatre companies work, that actors would have almost certainly made suggestions and would certainly have created "business".

On the other hand, WS's plays are so distinctive and were so admired at the time, he was almost certainly principally responsible. (I believe it is thought he had collaborators on some of the later plays - Henry VIII and Pericles.)

What makes me suspicious is treating the play texts as some sort of sacred writing to only be approached with awe and reverence. For goodness' sake, he meant bits of them to be funny!

[Jackson Richardson]

PS. If you really want to know Shakespeare, you should read/see one of the great tragedies, Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Anthony and Cleopatra. Macbeth is particularly short (I've seen it acted without and interval) and might be a good one to start.

[jayat]

Hi ruggerland,

Now I changed authors. I'm reading "Heart of Darknees" by J. Conrad to not become satured of so much Light an Greatness, also in original version helped by nowadays English (in no fear...). I need a "rest" to say so.

[Jackson Richardson]

I'm not a great fan of Conrad myself, but it is amazing he is a major figure in a literature that was not his first language. King Lear is not light and sweetness as it were. The C18 critic Samuel Johnson couldn't bring himself to read the ending without weeping. It's certainly in the same league of grimness as Heart of Darkness.

It's always best to vary the books you read. So many books, so little time.

[Jackson Richardson]

Just as a matter of interest, were you taught in school in Catalan or Castilian?

Thanks for the reference to Ramon Lull. I had heard of him but I wasn't aware he wrote in Catalan.