Twilfth Night or whatyouwill

okay i rmemember what i'd been going to post about in this blog yesterday; it's about Twilfth Night. My favorite Shakespeare play actually. it's not coincidental that I brought it up eariler in a post dealing with Other//half/, after all it is the one with the gender role expolrations via disguises, and the doppelgancership via identical-ish twins. 

But Shapesar's so great because ther'es also a human drama in that, all that, and it's fascinating because this production design gave the characters Elizabethan dress but each design was iconic enough you could tell who a character was just looking at them; they didn't all look the same. So I could glean stuff I'd never been able to before about how each character fits in the story.

(And each character had multiple outfits and it still made sense.)

What's fascinating about Twelgth Night (or whatyouwill) is how a lot of it revolves around stuff Shalespeare covers elsewhere: letters and letter writing in Much Ado About Nothing, crossdressing in um a lot of 'em, Comedy of Errors also with the doppelganger stuff. But it's only in the fifth act in Tevlet Night that the doppelganger stuff comes in, to extract the characters from a sticky plot.

Orsino sends Viola to Priscilla Mullins Olivia, or John Alden I suppose would be the proper proper noun verb, but just as with Myles Standish Olivia falls for Viola, though meanwhile Viola's fallen for Orsino. How they going to get out of this one? Olivia mistakenly marries Viola's twin brother instead, because he entered the picture, and that leaves Viola and Orsino free to hook up.

How convenient that Sebastian should be a thing, right? But it's been established since the second scene of the first act that Viola has a twin brother, and they both were in the same shipwreck. And so Shakespeare Chekhov's guns Chekhov's guns a quarter of a millennium before Chekhov is a thing (though guns are totally a thing by this time already, of course; they're mentioned in this play so there.)

But what I find most fascinating is the way Shakespeare cast herds: another thing he does, like in A Midsummer Night's Dream and As You Like It (watching someone come in from a different part of the play and just like pass by is what prompts Jaques to launch into his "All the Wor'ds A AStage" soliilogua.y.) Toby Belch is chilling with Anred Aguecheek is chilling with Malvolio and, that other guy I don't kbow what he does I guess just fills out things numvbers-wise with that group, and Feste, while meanwhile ther's um that lady, chilling there, and the other guys, and also there's Sebastian and that ex-pirate war criminal- 

and serosly, he didn't have to be an ex-pirate war criminal, but that's what he was made, and so that's another thing, like, each character basically has their own plot and arc and everything. And not all gets resolved by the end(pirate dude, Malvolio, in this production they let pirate dude go chase Malvolio after he stomps off the stage and out of the play, but I'd have to check the script to see if that's discussed in dialogue because sharkspear dpesn't have stage directions besides entrance and exit, and exit pursied bu a bat.)

And, like the cast herd stuff at least, and each arc interacting creating plot, that's the one, like the idea lonk where I tried to just create a plot and smashed some dramatic situations together, act one act two act three, what should have been done, what I should do instead, is have three groups, and each group has the plat, and the groups inreract forming a greater plit.

but all my favorite bands seem to be coming out with albums this year and I ordered Songs of Experience but looks like I'm having it shipped to the wrong address oops.

And oh my heavensi t's Crhistmas!