The "Circulation" Between Social Life And The Play

Twelfth Night(1601-1602) is one of the finest comedies by William Shakespeare(1564-1616), of which the plot and the characterization are refined and ingenious. TwelfthNight has been originally called What You Will for its jovial feel of Epiphany, which tells acomplex and funny love story. In Twelfth Night, Viola, the protagonist, wears man’s clothes topursue her master Orsino’s love. However, Countess Olivia, the dream lover of Duke Orsino,immediately falls in love with cross-dressing Viola. At last, Viola and Orsino get married,Olivia marries with Sebastian. William Shakespeare in Renaissance advocates freedom,reason and personality. He also stresses the human’s value.This thesis tries to studies Twelfth Night on the theoretical base of New Historicism, inwhich “the circulation of social energy” put forward by Stephen Greenblatt, a representativeNew Historicist, will be explained in details in the following analysis. Thus, the thesishighlights the process of the circulation of cultural, economic and political energy mentionedin Greenblatt’s “circulation of social energy”, attempting to reveal Shakespeare’s aims toreconstruct cultural prosperity, economic development and the centralization in QueenElizabethan era in this play.The thesis falls into three chapters besides an introduction and a conclusion.Introduction includes brief introductions of Twelfth Night and New Historicism,Literature Review, Significance of the Thesis. The author discussed the circulation of socialenergies in Twelfth Night.Chapter One interprets the cultural energy in Twelfth Night. It is not uncommon to findthe phenomenon of cross-dressing in literature. Being a kind of cultural phenomenon, cross-dressing has taken part in social construction. The female protagonist Viola disguisesherself to cast off the limit of traditional gender status of paternity. During the process ofsubversion of tradition, Viola succeeds in reaching physical and mental maturities. At the endof play, Viola returns to the lady with romantic love and family love. The play effects thesocial cultural construction. William Shakespeare shaped a bright, brave female image toconstruct the cultural energy, which spreads advanced humanism to people and educatepeople.Chapter Two interprets the economic energy in Twelfth Night. In Elizabethan era, thesocial economic structure had greatly changed. Centralism, Capitalism and victory of militarylead to economy prosperity in society. Olivia, Sir Andrew, Antonio and Malvolio representdifferent benefits groups which are kingship, aristocrat, oversea adventurer and the poor.William Shakespeare and value orientation negotiated to subvert traditional feudal economicvalue orientation, and reconstruct the new money view in the early capitalist economy.Chapter Three interprets the political energy in Twelfth Night. At the center of thestructure of power in society, Queen Elizabeth I depicted in the play was good at usingpolitical energy to consolidate her monarchy. During the characterization of the play, Violaand Olivia who are Queen Elizabeth I’s avatars are goodliness, adamancy and patience inTwelfth Night. The praise of Queen Elizabeth I establishes a kind of political power to getpeople’s Obedience. With the performance, the power has been enhanced to reconstruct acentralized feudal monarchy.Based on the above analysis, this thesis comes to the conclusion that Twelfth Night is theresult of social negotiation which concerns culture, economy, and politics. It also points outthe limitations of research, and puts forward the idea for further works in the future.