Blog 5

            I was very excited to read Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare because one of my favorite movies, She’s The Man is based off the same character dynamics, although it has a modern setting of private boarding high school rather than a foreign land your home country is at war with.

            I think the dynamic between the characters is very interesting unique, especially since Shakespeare was able to create a true love triangle between Duke Orsino, Olivia, and Viola. It is very coincidental that there is a bit of a love triangle (actually more of a rectangle) between the second graders at Tunbridge I got to hear some drama about. Although the boys make fun of the girls to flirt with them rather than sending “romantic” messages through servants, unfortunately there is still some rejection happening to the boys.

            A common theme from Twelfth Night is the confusion or uncertainty of gender. With Viola playing a boy, Cisario, it makes the love triangle possible and very confusing for the main characters. I am surprised that Shakespeare wrote in such a strong story line about gender confusion because I feel like the idea of a girl pretending to be a man would not be taken very well in society back then, despite the comic reliefs that were included. Even up until recently gender has been so fixed, it makes me wonder how Olivia and Duke will react in the end when they find out Cisario is not a male but a female.

            This easily accepted gender swap in the play contradicts what I have seen about gender at Tunbridge. One day the kids were outside playing soccer and they wanted to break up into teams. They decided right away to do a boy’s team and girls team, the fact that this was their first instinct made me feel like they were very aware of their genders and the differences. I don’t know if they wanted to split like that because they thought boys and girls should be separated, or they just wanted to be with their friends (they are still at the point in their lives where you don’t interact with the opposite sex and the vast majority of your friends are the same gender as you).

            Despite two very different age groups and time periods, it seems that all of humanity can run into the same types of problems, they just differ in how they respond and approach the problems.