Act 1, Scene 3 of Twelfth Night introduces characters Sir Toby Belch and Maria, establishing their personalities and social dynamics, while also setting the stage for the arrival of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a potential suitor for Olivia, highlighting themes of excess, social hierarchy, and comedic misunderstandings.
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hello and welcome to our next step in
our 12th night journey and again a
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Bell look at my other videos all of that
good stuff that you really know to do
already I'm sure without further Ado
let's move on to our next scene so we're
going to be we've done scene one scene
two going into act one scene 3
now the next two scenes are actually
pretty short so we've got introduction
of more characters here soobi and Mariah
so soobi belch so this seene is
interesting for lots of reasons it in
some ways parallels what we've seen
already with orino and orino we know
that he's he wanted excess of it in
terms of Love didn't he living to excess
Toby lives to excess sir Toby I should
say let's not be disrespectful sir Toby
lives to excess in terms of alcohol he
really is a is a big Boozer let's say it
like that and we've also got Mariah in
this scene who is the servant of
Olivia and we were also introduced to
Sir Andrew auu as well in a moment too
so opening of the scene starts with so
Toby uh again it's media R Shakespeare
using media res halfway through the
conversation straight
away and Toby's philosophy Shakespeare
sums up Toby's philosophy here very
succinctly I'm sure car is an enemy to
life so he he's obviously somebody likes
to drink he likes to
party he's not worried about health or
anything like detrimental effects of
that or actually the effects of it on
anybody else actually either as well as
himself so he's really concerned with
parying to excess and we've talked about
12th night as a festival before 12th
night was a big party of Shakespeare's
time the 12th night of Christmas massive
parties involving roles being whopped rooll
rooll
reversal games and obviously excess and
including excess with alcohol their
alcohol will be stronger than modern
alcohol by average as well so it would
be um yeah very very headache inducing
parties Shakespeare quickly establishes
the relationship very efficiently of
characters in the scene so Mariah there
your cousin my lady so we're getting an
idea of the social structure here you
might be intrigued to see how familiar
Maria is with sirt toi obviously higher social
social
class that does actually have some
connections to things that's later on as
well so takes great exceptions to your
ill hours he's been coming coming in
late he's been out drinking he comes in
late he comes in late
drunk and there's a lot of interesting
exchange here mainly about like
misunderstandings because soobi is
actually drunk again so there are some
mild misunderstandings here for for comedy
comedy
purposes confine I'll confine myself no
finer I am as in I'm not going to
restrict myself uh I'm not going to
restrict myself he's kind of
misunderstanding it as in these clothes
are good enough to drink in and so be
these boots
too so he's he's fine to go out drinking
in these clothes in confinement the idea
of wearing things that's what
Shakespeare's drawing on
there Mariah's concerned for so Toby
that quaffing and drinking will Undo You
You could also link this to the idea of
like ing boundaries as well where you've
got a sense of it's everything's fine in
moderation if you cross a particular
boundary it can become incredibly
damaging then we're introduced to Sir
Andrew aguchi and I should have said as
well at sir Toby his Sur is s Toby belch
so Shakespeare will occasionally use
acronyms as in names that suit the
characters you see these in lots of
films and novels and Dickens is big on
anonyms of course
um you've also you characters whose
personality suits their names and vice
versa I suppose an a cheek is an egg an
auu is an illness and cheek it can mean
face but it's probably bum cheek here
basically so these are comedy characters
so Toby belch obviously belching
burping he's as tall a man as any in
ayria this is a double meaning is he's
he's meant to be a very tall thin
character and he's also it's meant to be
courageous actually tall as man it's
meant to be as in like we still say
things like Stand Tall you know like
being confident that's the kind of rough
evolution of the word you know tracing
it back so it kind of still connects it
still kind of makes sense in that
way you could see here plenty of uh the
non sequitors really so Toby because of
his drinking he doesn't seem to answer
straight so non Secor in this case it's
things that just don't follow so he's as
taller man as any in the area what's
that to the purpose why has 3,000
duckets a year that's money so he's very
he's very rich so it doesn't All Connect
so non secretors I like
that so Toby in response to Mariah's
criticism of Sir Andrew basically he's a
fool we don't really want him around
Toby says well look he does all these
things he plays v v de gamb booys which
is a special type of um a
via you see Shakespeare you see violent musical
musical
instrument even though very unlikely a
knight would actually play that musical
instrument so this is probably a lie
well it's yeah pretty much certainly a
lie so Toby is hyping up Sir Andrew and
he's got all these qualities where he
claims he has his qualities that he
actually hasn't got speaks three or four
languages word for word without book and
have all the good gifts of nature so
he's being his qualities are being very exaggerated
