twelfth night

Sebastian’s soliloquy at the beginning of act 4 scene 3 gives the reader insight into his character and emphasizes many of the major ideas that the play attempts to convey. Shakespeare employs meticulous diction in this passage which not only highlights Sebastian’s thoughts, but the irony contained within them. Although it is a short passage, to examine every line would require numerous pages. Therefore, I have chosen a few instances which I found especially entertaining and intriguing. In the first line, Sebastian verifies to himself that he is not in fact insane by identifying the air and sun. The use of the sun is interesting for two reasons. For one, since Sebastian, and the majority of the characters for that matter, are in the dark in a figurative sense, Shakespeare chooses perhaps the greatest contrast to darkness in order to emphasize their obliviousness. Also, the sun and light are often correlated with reason and clear thinking which Sebastian is claiming to have throughout his soliloquy. However, it is difficult to believe that he is in a totally sane state of mind because just a few lines later he agrees to marry Olivia. He is not reasonable at all but foolish and obviously a bit in love with himself since he only briefly questions Olivia’s seemingly random love for him before he goes along with it. Another clever choice of words, or in this case, an object, is the pearl. The play, like most of Shakespeare’s comedies, focuses a great deal on disguise and appearance versus reality. The pearl then, being contained within a rugged exterior and therefore in disguise itself, is an ideal object to illustrate this. Another great use of language is the name Elephant. The elephant in the room is the incredibly obvious thing that people either are oblivious to or refuse to see and acknowledge. In this case, the audience is aware of the mistaken identities but the characters are completely ignorant of it. And finally, what would a Shakespeare play be without a hint of underlying sexual implication? A few lines that I thought perhaps eluded to this were, “this pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see’t,” “yet doth this accident and flood of fortune,” and “with such a smooth, discreet and stable bearing.” Interpret as you will, and perhaps I have interpreted too much, but I always assume Shakespeare is trying to dirty it up a bit.

Straying from Sebastian’s character and more towards the relation of the soliloquy to the play in general, numerous points can be found. First, the fact that Sebastian and Viola are so easily confused, especially by Olivia, undermines any claims made about love in the play. While some love (like that of Viola for the Duke) appears to be somewhat legitimate, the fact that other characters can mistake their lovers for someone else discredits the emotion. Another blow to love illustrated in this scene and throughout the play is the ability of characters to be so easily persuaded to love someone. Sebastian figures that if Olivia loves him, then why not love her back even though he has scarcely spoken to her. Another example of this is the fact that the Duke eagerly marries Viola at the end only moments after finding out that she is actually a woman and not a man. Also in this soliloquy, the thread woven throughout the play of deceit, disguise, and appearance versus reality is neatly condensed and summarized. We quickly learn that few things are as they seem and though we may think that our own minds deceive us, often times it is others doing the deceiving. So, the question that Sebastian struggles with is what or who to believe. Do we assume that we are insane or trust our sanity? Do we trust others or question everything we see? For the most part, the characters believe that they are mentally stable but at the same time, they are too willing to assume that what they see is true and therefore, they are often conveyed as foolish.