Significantly, Twelfth Night is the last of the romantic comedies. Here the recognition is of the transience of life, unlike in Cymbeline where the rediscovery of Perdita symbolises the rediscovery of one’s soul. Only, Keats finds reassurance in the fact that swallows will return, but Shakespeare is concerned with the cessation of life which looms over the whole play. The mood is similar in Keats’s ‘To Autumn’, Hedge-crickets sing and now with a treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft Īnd gathering swallows twitter in the skies. This cycle of life is an extension of the ancient pagan fertility rituals. The feast of epiphany is the last festival of the Christmas season, after which death takes over. Epiphany, according to Christian mythology, is the time when the shepherds recognized the birth of Christ. The Christian associations of the title suggests the carpe diem theme which runs through the play. Twelfth Night is the merriest of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, it is also the saddest.
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