Carpe Diem Attitudes in the play

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  • 'CARPE DIEM ATTITUDES IN THE PLAY
    • Sir Toby
      • Maria: 'you must confine yourself within the modest limits of order'
        • Sir Toby can be seen as an embodiment of the play's festive, comic energies
        • He is characterised by excess
        • Toby's motivations are selfish, he lives to enjoy drinking and merry making
        • He is devoted to self-gratification w/o much thought for others
      • 'Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?'
        • He defiantly aligns himself
        • Challenge's Malvolio's right to impose his puritanical codes on behaviour on the revellers
          • When the puritans came to power after the civil war, their first aims were to shut all theatres. Maybe Toby's 'cakes and ale' may not be just about self-indulgence, rather a defence of the way of life which includes theatre itself
        • An intebrated but eloquent rhetorical question, he dismisses sobriety - both literally & in the wider metaphorical sense of the attempt to deny appetite & pleasure
          • The clash between revelry and repression establishes the conflict which will lead to Malvolio's inevitable undoing
    • Feste
      • Get's involved with Sir Toby's revelry
        • However, his song contributes to the sense of melancholy which permeates the pla
          • 'O mistress mine, why are you roaming?'
        • You would think that Feste, being a jester, would have the most carpe diem attitude of all, however that's not necessarily the case
          • There seems to be irritation from Feste, amid the jesting, in the exchanges between him and Andrew
            • 'I shall be constrained in't to call thee knave, knight'
            • 1974 Ron Pember's Feste - became a Malvolio like puritan
      • Jumps at the chance to play the mysterious wise fool
        • 'Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady'
          • Challenges Olivia, attempting to prove she is a fool
            • 'More the fool Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven'
              • Surely heaven is a better place
        • 'Cacullus non facit monachum'
          • The hood doesn't make the monk
          • Just because he is dressed as a fool, doesn't mean he is one
            • 'I wear not motely in my brain'
    • Thad Jenkins Logan - 'Festivity has lost its innocence - highly sexual with a subplot of revelry'
      • Geoffrey Hartman - 'Play is preoccupied by puns and witty rhetoric'l
        • 1999 Tonkin - 'Sir Toby's word of festival idleness will eventually give way to Malvolio's kill joy world of everyday'

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