Writer's Techniques (OCR A-Level English Literature): Revision Notes
Writer's Techniques
Shakespeare employs a range of sophisticated dramatic techniques in Twelfth Night to explore human desire and create both comedy and emotional depth. Understanding these techniques will help you analyse how Shakespeare crafts his characters and develops the play's central themes.
Soliloquy
What is a soliloquy?
A soliloquy is a speech delivered by a character when alone on stage, revealing their private thoughts and feelings directly to the audience. This technique creates intimacy between the character and the audience, allowing us to understand motivations that other characters cannot see.
Viola's soliloquy in Act II, Scene II
Viola's soliloquy is a key example of Shakespeare using this technique to reveal character complexity. In this scene, Viola occupies what is called a liminal space – she exists between two identities, being both female (Viola) and male (Cesario in disguise). This in-between state creates dramatic tension and audience engagement.
Analysing Viola's Soliloquy
In the soliloquy, Viola expresses guilt about Olivia's developing feelings for her disguised self, Cesario. She recognises that Olivia would be better off loving a dream than loving someone who doesn't truly exist. The word disguise becomes crucial here, emphasising the gap between appearance (Cesario) and reality (Viola).
This technique builds anticipation in the play. The audience becomes aware of Viola's inner turmoil whilst knowing that other characters remain oblivious to the truth. This creates both sympathy for Viola's predicament and excitement about how the confusion will eventually resolve.
Purpose of soliloquies
Shakespeare uses soliloquies to:
- Reveal characters' true thoughts and emotions
- Create sympathy and connection between audience and character
- Build dramatic tension and anticipation
- Highlight themes of appearance versus reality
- Provide insight that other characters lack
Rhyming couplets
Structure and function
A rhyming couplet consists of two consecutive lines of verse that rhyme. Shakespeare, drawing on his background as a poet, frequently uses rhyming couplets to signal closure or emphasise important moments.
Example from Viola's soliloquy
Rhyming Couplet Analysis
The conclusion of Viola's soliloquy features the rhyming couplet:
O Time, thou must untangle this not I;
It is too hard a knot for me to untie
This couplet serves multiple purposes. The rhyme scheme gives a sense of finality to the speech – when actors deliver these lines, the rhyming pattern signals to the audience that the soliloquy is ending.
Literary devices within the couplet
The couplet contains both imagery and a pun. The pun plays on the similar sounds of 'knot' and 'not', creating a clever wordplay that reflects the tangled, complicated nature of Viola's situation. The image of a knot that needs untangling symbolises the complex web of deception and mistaken identity that has developed. Viola recognises she cannot resolve this situation herself and must hope that time will sort out the confusion.
Dialogue: prose versus verse
Understanding the distinction
Shakespeare deliberately chooses whether characters speak in prose (ordinary speech) or verse (poetic, rhythmic speech). This choice reveals information about character status, emotional state, and relationships.
Malvolio's shifting speech patterns
Malvolio provides a fascinating example of this technique. Early in the play, he speaks in prose, demonstrating his intelligence. However, by Act V, Scene I, his speech shifts to verse:
Malvolio's Disrupted Verse
Lady, you have. Pray you, pursue that letter.
You must not now deny that it is in your hand:
Write from it, if you can, in hand or phrase,
Or say 'tis not your seal, not your invention
Significantly, this verse deliberately does not follow the rules of iambic pentameter (the regular rhythm of unstressed and stressed syllables). The disrupted rhythm mirrors Malvolio's heightened emotional state. The breathlessness created by frequent punctuation emphasises his humiliation and confusion. This broken rhythm makes his distress palpable to the audience.
Orsino's controlled verse
Orsino's Smooth Iambic Pentameter
In contrast, Orsino's famous opening speech follows smooth iambic pentameter:
If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, suffering,
The appetite may sicken, and so die
The controlled rhythm symbolises Orsino's higher social status and self-control, despite the content being about his intense, unstable feelings for Olivia. This creates irony – the form suggests control whilst the content reveals emotional excess. The audience may find this comedic, as Orsino speaks so passionately about love for someone he has never actually met, suggesting he is in love with the idea of being in love rather than with Olivia herself.
Language and diction
Vocabulary as characterisation tool
Shakespeare uses different vocabulary levels and language styles to distinguish characters and reveal their intelligence and social position. Characters with more intelligence typically receive a larger, more sophisticated vocabulary, whilst those of lower status speak with more limited vocabulary.
Feste's witty language
Feste, the Clown, demonstrates his intelligence through wit rather than formal eloquence. He frequently uses puns, aphorisms (wise sayings), and plays on words.
Feste's Wordplay
In Act I, Scene V, he says:
Wit, and't be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus? Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.
This speech demonstrates intelligence through wordplay and paradox. The invented authority 'Quinapalus' adds mock-scholarly weight to his observation that it's better to be a clever fool than a foolish person who thinks themselves clever.
Malvolio's arrogant language
Malvolio's language is well-spoken but lacks Feste's wit. Instead, it reveals his arrogance and self-importance. His final line in Act V, Scene I demonstrates this:
Malvolio's Final Words
I'll be reveng'd on the whole pack of you!
The metaphor the whole pack of you is revealing. It shows how Malvolio feels isolated and singled out, like prey being hunted by a pack of animals. This imagery emphasises his exclusion – whilst other characters end the play in romantic partnerships or companionship, Malvolio's storyline remains unresolved, making him a tragic loose end in an otherwise comic resolution.
Language and status
The contrast between characters' language serves to:
- Establish social hierarchy
- Reveal intelligence and education
- Show emotional states (formal vs informal speech)
- Create comedy through mismatched registers
- Develop sympathy or antipathy for characters
Dramatic irony
Definition and effect
Dramatic irony occurs when the audience possesses knowledge that characters on stage do not have. This technique creates anticipation, tension, and often comedy, as the audience watches characters act on incomplete or incorrect information.
Malvolio's self-deception
Malvolio's storyline provides the play's strongest example of dramatic irony. He suffers from self-love and believes that Olivia has romantic feelings for him. He interprets her compliance with his decisions as evidence of her love, when in reality this is simply the normal relationship between a lady and her steward. As Clare Byrne notes, an Elizabethan household steward held a position of considerable authority and responsibility, making Olivia's deference to Malvolio's judgement entirely conventional rather than romantic.
The forged letter
The Power of Dramatic Irony
The dramatic irony intensifies when Maria forges a love letter supposedly from Olivia. The audience knows the letter is fake, but Malvolio remains completely oblivious. His misreading of the situation becomes what one critic describes as 'a conceited and subjective interpretation of data which confirms instead of challenging his fantasy'.
Malvolio doesn't truly desire Olivia as a person; rather, he desires the status and title that would come with marrying her. He wants to become 'Count Malvolio'. This reveals his materialistic nature beneath his Puritan exterior – a form of internal disguise or spiritual deception that mirrors Viola's physical disguise.
Appearance versus reality
The dramatic irony surrounding Malvolio reinforces one of Shakespeare's favourite themes: appearance versus reality. Things are not always as they seem. Malvolio appears to be a pious Puritan but is actually motivated by materialism and ambition. Viola appears to be a male page but is actually a woman. The audience's privileged knowledge of these discrepancies creates both comedy and dramatic tension.
Functions of dramatic irony
Dramatic irony:
- Creates suspense and anticipation for the audience
- Generates comedy through characters' mistakes
- Reveals character flaws and true motivations
- Emphasises themes of deception and disguise
- Makes the audience feel complicit in the dramatic action
Exam tips
When analysing dramatic techniques:
- Always link techniques to their effects on the audience
- Consider how techniques develop themes (identity, appearance vs reality, desire)
- Use specific quotations to support your analysis
- Discuss how techniques would work in performance, not just on the page
- Compare how different characters use or are affected by the same technique
Key quotations to learn:
- Viola's couplet about time untangling the knot
- Orsino's opening speech about music and love
- Malvolio's final threat of revenge
- Feste's 'better a witty fool than a foolish wit'
Essay structure:
- Introduce the technique and define it clearly
- Provide specific examples from the text
- Analyse the effect on audience and themes
- Link to Shakespeare's broader dramatic purposes
Remember!
Key Techniques to Master:
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Soliloquies reveal private thoughts and create intimacy between character and audience, particularly showing Viola's inner conflict about her disguise
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Rhyming couplets signal closure and emphasise key moments, using wordplay and imagery to reinforce meaning
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Prose versus verse indicates status, emotional state, and character development; disrupted rhythm shows heightened emotion
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Language and diction vary by character to show intelligence, status, and personality; wit demonstrates cleverness differently from formal eloquence
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Dramatic irony creates comedy and tension by giving the audience knowledge characters lack, particularly regarding Malvolio's self-deception and Viola's disguise