Twelfth Night Draft and Tweethis Comments

For my paper I asked people on my Facebook account if they read Twelfth Night in junior high, and if not what plays they read.  I found out that, at least amongst my acquaintances, it is not commonly taught.  I have one acquaintance, though, who knew of a school where the 8th graders are studying it. He directed Twelfth Night last year and he's played Malvolio. I've asked him more about that and I'm awaiting his response.

Here's my 4 page draft!  It's very rough. I have a lot more research to do. Any thoughts would be appreciated, though.



Twelfth Night is a valuable play to be studied by junior high students as an introduction to Shakespeare because it deals with important issues for that age including relationships and bullying and, despite its categorization as a comedy, it encourages the reader to move away from a suspension of reality with these and other issues that are important in this stage of life. Shakespeare needs to be relevant to students. Otherwise, the barriers of difficult language and a bygone time period make Shakespeare appear impenetrable to students in this age range.
One major way in which young students can find relevance in Twelfth Night is through the variety of  romantic situations the characters find themselves in.  Duke Orsino loves Olivia who does not return his affection. Olivia loves an unaware Duke Orsino. Malvolio and Sir Andrew think Olivia likes them, but they are mistaken.   Duke Orsino spends some time believing that the girl he likes has been stolen from him by a guy friend he has trusted.  Junior high is full of situations like these, and even those students who don’t have any romantic connections or problems are fascinated by them. There is a fear of Shakespeare in young students that comes from expecting not to understand or gain anything from someone who lived so long ago. Twelfth Night is a good introduction to Shakespeare as an artist whose themes transcend time and place and age.
Another very applicable issue to students in junior high that appears in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is bullying. According to the U. S. National Institute of Health, about 47 teens are bullied every 5 minutes and teens in grades 6 through 10 are most likely to be involved in activities related to bullying (U.S. National Institute of Health, SAFE, TonyBartoli). This is a large problem and one that many junior high students face in some form.  Malvolio in Twelfth Night is the victim of bullying tactics that are very similar to tactics used today.  He is tricked into believing that a girl likes him by reading a fake love letter and he acts like a fool as a result, which leads him to be taunted and humiliated. He is shut up in a dark cell where he is tricked some more.  Robin Bates, an English teacher, discussed how a student in her class related to Malvolio because of situations that happened to him in his own life and he came to the conclusion that the bullies attacked both him and Malvolio as a result of class insecurity (Bates Bullying in Twelfth Night).  Students reading Twelfth Night in recent years have identified that the fake love letter trick is used in cyber-bullying with similar consequences to its victims (Giguere 6). Along with relationships between boys and girls, students reading Twelfth Night can also identify with the relationships between bully and bullied and they can learn how to overcome these problems.
In 2011 a team that included teachers and the Colorado Shakespeare Association demonstrated this by doing Twelfth Night anti-bullying workshops in schools all over Colorado with great success (Wegrzyn).  The company performed the sections of the play in which Malvolio is picked on and then the students reenacted them and gained insights into how they could intervene in similar situations to help a bullied victim. Students related to Shakespeare and found ways to address their bullying problems.  Studying this play gives students greater accessibility to Shakespeare and his language along with experience interacting with the Bard’s text.
Twelfth Night invites the reader to move away from suspending reality, including the realities in relationships and bullying, and this provides other ways in which this play can be relevant and valuable in a junior high student’s life. This can seem ironic as the play is a comedy and Shakespeare’s comedies are generally unrealistic. They are known for being fantastic and requiring a suspension of reality.  There are certainly aspects of that in this play. Viola and Sebastian are separated in a shipwreck and each thinks the other is dead. Though they are different genders, they are identical when Viola puts on boy clothes, as people confuse one for the other multiple times. For this and other reasons,Twelfth Night is not perfectly realistic. The play goes against its own fantastical nature, however, by closing with an invitation to step out of the fake land of perfect endings and “happily ever afters” with Malvolio’s cries of revenge and Feste’s somber closing song. Twelfth Night goes against the pattern of the perfect comedy in its lack of complete resolution in these aspects. This is important for students in junior high as unrealistic expectations can develop from always hearing stories of complete and easy resolutions. The characters’ actions in Twelfth Night have lasting consequences.
The play ends without complete resolution in several ways that have significance for junior high students. One important way in which Twelfth Night does not end perfectly has to do with the bullying of Malvolio. Near the end of the play he swears revenge on those who have bullied him, and that is the last we hear from him. The play does not end with compensation for the wrongs that have been made against him or with his forgiveness of the bullies.  It also ends without the revenge occurring and thus the revenge cannot be resolved.  Robin Bates’ student compared Malvolio to other bullied people in real life who turned violent (Columbine, etc.).  Malvolio’s ominous statement carries with it implications that there are consequences for actions and they are not swept away easily with the close of the play or with the close of the school year.
The most obvious proof of the play’s lack of resolution despite the happy marriages of the main characters to the reader naturally roots for is the closing song sung by Feste the Clown.  He sings about growing from young to old and repeats the phrase, “For the rain it raineth every day.”  Dr. Michael Delahoyde explained the meaning of this song by quoting Goddard who said,
The thing that this society of pleasure-seekers has forgotten is the wind and the rain. It's all right to play with toys while we are children, and later we may thrive for a little time by swaggering or crime. But knaves and thieves are soon barred out. There is such a thing as coming to a man's estate, such a hard reality.... (Goddard)
While the play provides an entertaining escape from reality, it reminds the reader as it closes that life is not perfect, and that it flows on to more problems after problems are resolved. This is important for junior high students to know as they are in the process of growing from children to adults, or coming to their “man’s estate,” and the Bard, who “teaches us how to be human” teaches this in Twelfth Night.
In discussing junior high experiences with Shakespeare with friends and acquaintances I learned that many students study Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Taming of the Shrew, but few study Twelfth Night. This play has a lot to offer students at the beginning of their relationship with Shakespeare, as it relates in many ways to experiences that are typical of that age, such as bullying and new experiences with relationships.The impressions students get from their initial experiences with the Bard often last throughout their lives and influence what they are able to gain from his work.  Twelfth Night is the perfect play to jumpstart a love affair with Shakespeare’s works.