An Analysis Of The Lie In Shakespeare's Play 'The Twelfth Night'

Humans are hardwired to lie and learn to do so at a very early age, both for the protection of society and to serve themselves, however most often humans lie simply to make things easier; they are inclined to take the path of least resistance in order to preserve their societies and relationships, as well as to avoid negative emotions for themselves. So, they lie, they lie to protect themselves from potential harm (physically or emotionally), they lie to protect others, and they lie for their own personal gain. In a study conducted by Timothy Levine, a PhD and professor at the Michigan State University in the Department of Communications, it's found that, "when honesty was sufficient to meet situational demands, honest messages were selected, generated, and observed 98.5% to 100% of the time. Alternatively, deception was observed 60.0% to 64.3% of the time when variations in the same situations made the truth problematic" (Levine). This research shows that most often humans lie simply because the truth would cause more problems than the lie therefore it would be easier to gloss over some parts. This kind of deceit can be seen throughout Shakespeare's comedy, "The Twelfth Night", most notably with Viola posing as a male. In the time, it would've been fairly risky for a wealthy, and pretty, young woman to be on her own, additionally she had little to no family left that she was aware of, it was easier and safer to pose as a male until she was in a position where she …show more content…
However, these white lies are still self-serving, they enable people to avoid consequence and falsely feel better about themselves, because, "Hey, I said something nice about that person's really ugly hat, kudos to me" only serves to lead that person on further humiliate