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Roger Osorio

Ms. Cruz-Solomon

AP English Literature and Composition

2-27-2020

Hamlet v Twelfth Night

Shakespeare is one of the most historical figures in English literature. Shakespeare has

created several poems, plays, and sonnets over the years. Throughout these pieces of work, there

have some plays that look the same on paper, but if you dig deeper than you can see the big

differences. Of them, Hamlet and Twelfth Night are perfect examples of both. The main

differences in these two Shakespearean plays is their genre, character development, irony, speech

patterns, and use of figurative.

The genre of each story is clearly different. In Hamlet, the characters are clearly in

dramatic blood pool of what is a tragedy. On the other hand, Twelfth Night is a humorous love

story of what is a comedy. Furthermore, the one is revolved around characters who try to

improvise uncontrollably when encountering some powerful personal loss and struggles with

madness, or at least that what seems to happen, while the other one involves romantic confusion,

tricky plans, and conversations that can easily go over the readers head. Even with Shakespeare

using a different genre on these stories, the characters are similar just with contrasting motives.

The characters in each play have a different way of developing. This is the case with lady

Olivia and everyone’s favorite crazy prince Hamlet. Both have to mourn a loss of a loved one at

the beginning of the play as Olivia loses her brother and Hamlet loses his father. However, both

characters are development differently with Hamlet being the bearer of bad news quite literally

with him killing a lot of people. On the other hand, Olivia is quite the victim of this bad news with
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the death of her brother, the rejection of her love from Cesario (Viola), and the awkward

harassment from Malvolio. Not only that but, Laertes and Viola are quite similar opposites with

Laertes finding his sister dead and wanting revenge, but Viola thinks her brother is dead and

decides to dress like man to get closer to her love interest instead of mourning. Kind of a bad

sibling if you ask me.

Possibly the strongest difference between the two is examples of dramatic irony. In Act 2

Scene one of Hamlet, the main character is acting mad to make the other characters seem like he

has gone crazy, but the others think this is due to his love for Ophelia. We know the real reason

why he is going crazy. While in Twelfth Night, the main use of dramatic irony is the love triangle

and just love in general. Apparently, almost everyone has a love interest in this play, while almost

everyone in Hamlet pretty much has a problem with Hamlet.

When it comes to speech pattern there is a bit of similarity which is that both are written in

verse and with a bit of prose. However, the big difference is that Hamlet is written in chronological

order while Twelfth Night is not. Twelfth Night has its events all over the place with the trick on

Malvolio and Olivia’s conquest for Cesario’s love being the big mix up here, they are both

continued in separate acts. On the other hand, Hamlet has its events in order from learning

Hamlet’s motives to setting out the plan to building up to the final battle. Hamlet keeps the story

on track while Twelfth Night just goes back and forth.

The irony might the strongest difference, but the use of figurative language is definitely a

huge differentiation. In the tragic story, Shakespeare uses a lot of puns while using other rhetorical

devices such as metaphors and personification. For example, in act 1 scene 2, Hamlet says, “A

little more than kin and less than kind.” He plays on the word kindred. He uses the pun to say that
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they're related but Claudius isn't nice to him. On the other hand, Twelfth Night uses many other

devices to add comedy and drama to the love experiences.

All in all, these two plays are not that different when you first look at them but start reading

more and more you can definitely see the difference,