Love and beauty in Shakespeare's sonnets and Twelfth Night

Abstract

My interest in Shakespeare inaugurated when I first read the play Twelfth Night. As a young teenager, I thought it was one of the funniest things I had ever come across. I re-read the play a few years later and I realised that apart from being a comedy, it was also a tragedy in itself. I noticed that the ending was not an entirely happy-ever after one, made possible through an allconsuming love. I also took note of the misfortunes that Antonio and Malvolio were both left with at the end of the so-called comedy. My readings of Shakespeare's sonnet sequence triggered similar emotions. Even though the sonnets may be called love sonnets, that same love might not be necessarily positive. In both Twelfth Night and the sonnet sequence, there is a tint of homosexuality which is analysed further through the issue of identity in both of these two literary works. Upon my reading of both of these works, I noticed the similarity with regard to the theme of beauty. The notion of increase and creation is very vivid in the poet of the sonnets and Viola's speech to Olivia. The concern for immortality was very present in Shakespeare's time and the notion of being immortal through verse is also noticeable in the sonnets. The introduction outlines a background to the sonnet sequence giving prominence to the uncertainty of this same sequence with regard to the issue of the sonnets being considered as biographical to Shakespeare's personal life. It also highlights the main themes of Twelfth Night which will be analysed in later chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter deals with whether or not Shakespeare adheres to the sonnet and comedy convention respectively. I felt that this was an important starting point so as to define the standpoint which both the sonnet sequence and Twelfth Night stand in. The second chapter goes into further detail on the sonnet sequence, keeping in focus the two main themes of love and beauty. The same is done in the third chapter with Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. This study ends by linking the two literary works together for a final concluding note.