Culd Olivia be the alter ego of Viola?

[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.