Setting
Illyria, the setting of Twelfth Night, is important to the play's romantic atmosphere. Illyria was an ancient region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea covering parts of modern Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro, and the city state of Ragusa has been proposed as the setting. Illyria may have been suggested by the Roman comedy Menæchmi, the plot of which also involves twins who are mistaken for each other. Shakespeare himself mentioned it previously, in Henry VI, Part II, noting its reputation for pirates. It has been noted that the play's setting also has English characteristics such as Viola's use of "Westward ho!", a typical cry of 16th-century London boatmen, and also Antonio's recommendation to Sebastian of "The Elephant" as where it is "best to lodge" in Illyria; the Elephant was a pub not far from the Globe Theatre.
Read more about this topic: Twelfth Night
Famous quotes containing the word setting:
“Only in the problem play is there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between Man’s will and his environment: in a word, of problem.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The mind cannot support moral chaos for long. Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
““Oh, let’s go up the hill and scare ourselves,
As reckless as the best of them tonight,
By setting fire to all the brush we piled
With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow....””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)