Imaginative Geography in Twelfth Night Christy Desmet University of Georgia.
-
Upload
margaret-hensley -
Category
Documents
-
view
217 -
download
1
Transcript of Imaginative Geography in Twelfth Night Christy Desmet University of Georgia.
1.2 of Twelfth Night
VIOLA: What country, friends, is this?
CAPTAIN: This is Illyria, lady.
VIOLA: And what should I do in Illyria?My brother he is in Elysium.Perchance he is not drowned.—What think you, sailors?
CAPTAIN: It is perchance that you yourself were saved.
VIOLA: O, my poor brother! And so perchance may he be. (Twelfth Night, 1.2, Folger Digital Texts)
Twelfth Night 1.2.9-18
CAPTAIN: True, madam. And to comfort you with chance,Assure yourself, after our ship did split,When you and those poor number saved with youHung on our driving boat, I saw your brother,Most provident in peril, bind himself(Courage and hope both teaching him the practice)To a strong mast that lived upon the sea,Where, like Arion on the dolphin’s back,I saw him hold acquaintance with the wavesSo long as I could see.
Arion astride a dolphin
“The mind of wild beasts is not so savage as that of greedy man.”
Alciato at Glasgow: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/facsimile.php?emb=A31b011
Twelfth Night (FDT)
Antonio: A witchcraft drew me hither.That most ingrateful boy there by your sideFrom the rude sea’s enraged and foamy mouthDid I redeem; a wrack past hope he was. (5.1.69-72)
Orsino: Be not amazed; right noble is his blood.If this be so, as yet the glass seems true,I shall have share in this most happy wrack.—Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand timesThou never shouldst love woman like to me. (5.1.276-80)
Romance of the Rose (British Library)
Then let thy love be younger than thyself,Or thy affection cannot hold the bent.For women are as roses, whose fair flower,Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour. Orsino to Viola 2.5.143
Viola as Liminal CharacerMALVOLIO: Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy—as a squash is before ’tis apeascod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple. ’Tiswith him in standing water, between boy and man.He is very well-favored, and he speaks very shrewishly. One would think his mother’s milk werescarce out of him.
(Twelfth Night, 1.5.155 ff.)