Throughout history there have been many great authors in different respects. Just as artists, authors need to choose the medium in which they will express their message. Authors could use poems, prose, or any other way to express their work. Two popular ways to express a work is either a novel or a play. Reading a play is very different from reading a novel in several key ways. First, reading a play forces you to think more about how the play would be acted out. When you read a novel, you are freer to create your own world. You can imagine both what the characters look like and create more full versions of their personalities for yourself. When reading a play, however, you are more coerced to use the author’s version of its production. You are more likely to look at past performances and when individuals read each like in the play, it provokes though about how each character would say it. People are more likely to think about voice inflection and overall meaning as it is more straightforward than in a novel.

                An interpretation of twelfth night if it were a novel might differ from one in its current state in a few ways. A novel allows people to create their own scenery, and situations. Therefore an interpretation would differ because people would most likely have different individual ideas about the specific scenes and characters in the story. Also, the thoughts about how the characters feel would be more open to interpretation because we would see less body movement if it were in a novel. The author would be able to create a better suspended reality in order to personify certain elements of the plot more effectively than in a play where most thing must be able to be acted out on stage.

                Watching the movie differs from reading the play because it varies the degree of control that the author has over the interpretation of the work to the audience. In a novel and a play it is impossible to show exactly what characters look like for the most part. Most of the interpretation is left up to the author. In the movie version of the work the director is the one who controls the audiences’ interpretation of the work. 

Andrew Welton

February 13, 2013

Ms. Sweezey

                The Character Viola is very crucial to the overall plot of the play. She provides the false identity that allows the love triangle we see in the play to exist. Viola makes others think she is a man in order to gain a job after a tragedy in her personal life. As the plot unfolds, we learn that other characters have fallen in love with her on the predisposition that she is actually a man. This leads to great confusion amongst characters which is the primary and central plot of the play. Thus the character Viola is central to the play. Viola is smart and she always uses practical reason to figure out her problems. For instance, when her brother dies she dresses like a man only to get a job. This is using reason because instead of mourning and being poor she goes out and achieves. Viola is the brother of Sebastian and becomes the hand of the Duke Orsino. This makes her attract Olivia as she looks like a man. Viola stated about women’s love “And so they are: alas, that they are so; To die, even when they to perfection grow”. This quote specifically shows her deception and capabilities thereof. Viola also stated: “Sooth, but you must. Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, Hath for your love a great a pang of heart As you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; You tell her so; must she not then be answer'd?” which defines Viola because it shows her capabilities to argue with her smarts as well as her admiring of women which she is unknowingly to the other characters. Viola also explained, “Alas, I took great pains to study it, and 'tis poetical,” which further explains Viola because it shows her willingness to put on a show to keep up her deceit. This speaks to her character because the whole sub plot of the novel is created by her deceit.