Act 4, scene 3 is a very brief scene; in fact, it seems to exist purely as a vehicle for this soliloquy from Sebastian, highlighting its significance. Sebastian is in Olivia's garden; we, the audience, know this, but Sebastian, who refers to her only as "the lady," we may infer knows little about her, possibly not even her name.
Notable in this soliloquy is the number of times "madness" is discussed. Sebastian declares that "wonder," rather than "madness," has overtaken him, but he then questions himself, as "my soul disputes well with my sense." He even ponders whether "the lady" might be mad, rather than Sebastian himself, but dismisses this notion as a mad person would not be able to "sway her house, command her followers," and conduct herself in such a "stable" fashion.
Sebastian's soliloquy is in verse, but does not contain any rhyme. It is interesting that the last four lines of the scene—two from Sebastian, and two from Olivia—are rhyming couplets. This suggests a level of unity between Sebastian and Olivia which stands in contrast to the blank verse of the initial soliloquy, at times almost incoherent in its cyclical repetition of the same concern. Upon Olivia's arrival, Sebastian goes from hovering on the brink of "madness" to "truth" and being "true." This may indicate that Sebastian has found his true purpose in accompanying Olivia, the lady who is the subject of his thoughts.
Monday, May 6, 2019
Are there any good points to annotate for Sebastian's speech in act 4, scene 3 of Twelfth Night?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
No comments:
Post a Comment