Twelfth Night Curriculum Unit

Students define literary terms. They analyze characterization, plot, setting, and subplot structure. Students examine puns, paradoxes, conceits, and myths. Students recognize dramatic conventions and devices, use personal experiences as reference points, and capture the timelessness of Shakespeare’s themes. A pre-reading lesson gives students an opportunity to contribute prior knowledge of Shakespearean drama, to predict and conjecture on questions posed, and to research topics relevant to the study of Twelfth Night. Several lessons include optional projects for individual interests and talents, and writing assignments test progress in composition skills.

Supplementary materials include writing topics, culminating activities, a quiz and an objective test with answer keys. This unit includes 14 Lesson Plans / 37 Handouts / 98 Pages, aligned to Common Core standards, grades 9-12, high school.

 

Literary Form

British Drama

21st-Century Skills

• Collaboration
• Critical thinking
• Productivity and accountability
• Leadership and responsibility

Overview

Twelfth Night, one of the best of Shakespeare’s mature comedies, is a play of lovers and their wooing. This play exemplifies various aspects of love: its sweetness, transitoriness, folly, and importance. It depicts various types of love: the melancholic love of Duke Orsino, hopelessly in love with love itself; the mourning love of Olivia for her dead brother; the mistaken love of the arrogant, humorless Malvolio; the true love of Viola for her master. The Elizabethan audience, like audiences today, confronted themselves in characters that experience self-deception, deceit, illusion, and reality—all in the name of love. Structurally, the play is an example of excellent workmanship with both the main plot and subplot superbly planned. The characters, sharply drawn and completely formed, each have their moment on the stage, with no one overshadowing anyone else.