A To Z Challenge 2022: Shakespeare- S Is For Sebastian And Shepherd

 

Olivia and Sebastian. Public Domain

Today’s letter is S. We will take a brief look at two S characters. 

S is for Sebastian, who is the twin brother of Viola, the heroine of Twelfth Night. He and his sister are parted during a storm off the coast of Illyria. The two of them think the other is dead, but both have survived the shipwreck. We see a lot of Viola, who appears in the very first scene and decides to disguise herself as a boy in order to get a job with the Duke, but Sebastian doesn’t arrive on the scene till later in the play, when he arrives with a sea captain called Antonio, who rescued him, but really is not happy to be in Illyria, where he is not welcome and likely to be arrested. Antonio lends him some money and they split up, agreeing to meet later. 

There is a lot of confusion as people mix him up with his sister, who is working for Duke Orsino under the name of Cesario. Antonio meets “Cesario” and is arrested as he had feared, asking for his money back, not realising he is speaking to the wrong twin.

Sebastian meets Olivia, whom Duke Orsino had wanted to marry, and marries her himself about five minutes later, angering Orsino, who thinks his trusted page Cesario has betrayed him. 

What a mess! 

Another S character is the old Shepherd in The Winter’s Tale, who finds a baby girl on the shores of Bohemia and raises her as his own. The child is a Princess, Perdita, daughter of Hermione and Leontes. More of this in the W post. His son, the young Shepherd, saw the death of Antigonus, courtier of Leontes, who had brought the baby to be abandoned, describing Antigonus’s mauling by a bear. 

“Thou met’st with things dying, I with things newborn,” his father tells him, showing him the baby. These two characters are funny and loveable and lighten up the tone of a play that has been grim till then.

More of these characters in W for The Winter’s Tale!