Lesson Plan

1) After sur­viv­ing a ship­wreck, Viola washes up on the shores of Illyria, a country with a name that con­notes illu­sion and myth. Viola believes her iden­ti­cal twin, Sebas­t­ian, to have died at sea. To stay safe in this unfa­mil­iar land, and to pay tribute to her lost brother, she dresses as a boy and calls herself Cesario. By exam­in­ing Viola’s strate­gies of self-preser­va­tion, stu­dents will learn how to heal them­selves when their hearts are broken.

2) The duke of Illyria, Orsino, is infat­u­at­ed with the count­ess Olivia, who, mourn­ing her own brother’s death, has let it be known that she will not give her atten­tion to him, nor to any man. She does not read his notes, she does not open his gifts; yet still, he keeps trying. By exam­in­ing Orsino’s obses­sion with Olivia, stu­dents will learn that they should not ide­al­ize the object of their affec­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly if that person tells them not to. 

3) Unbe­knownst to Viola, Sebas­t­ian is alive and well, having been saved by Antonio, who is secret­ly in love with him. Antonio will shadow Sebas­t­ian every­where, pro­tect­ing him, dueling for him, and lending him his purse of money. Obliv­i­ous to Antonio’s feel­ings (or pre­tend­ing to be), Sebas­t­ian will travel freely through­out Illyria, ben­e­fit­ing from his friend’s gen­eros­i­ty. By exam­in­ing Antonio’s unre­quit­ed devo­tion to Sebas­t­ian, stu­dents will learn that friend­ship rarely turns into roman­tic love. 

4) When Viola, as Cesario, visits Olivia, the Count­ess is smitten with the “boy.” Late in act four, Olivia weds Sebas­t­ian, believ­ing him to be Cesario. It is not entire­ly clear that she is over Viola, now her sister-in-law, by the time the curtain closes. By exam­in­ing Olivia’s love for both Viola and Sebas­t­ian, stu­dents will learn that it is pos­si­ble to care about more than one person at a time.

1) Stu­dents should have had at least one crush on an unavail­able someone: the captain of the foot­ball team, the brood­ing poet, the friend who’s con­fessed to you their love for someone else. 

2) Stu­dents should have a go-to song they listen to when they feel lonely: Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me,” maybe, or Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” or Adele’s “Someone Like You.” Older songs are accept­able as well, such as Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” Ani DiFranco’s “Untouch­able Face,” or any­thing by Joni Mitchell. 

3) Stu­dents should have an under­stand­ing of iambic pentameter. 

1) A copy of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The script should be well-worn and dog-eared, key speech­es high­light­ed, notes scrawled in the margins, sig­nif­i­cant words circled and starred. The more obses­sive­ly ana­lyzed, the better. 

2) Patience, for when stu­dents do not see their beloved for days, and their calls go straight to voicemail. 

3) A dash of willful ignorance.

 1) The teacher should be in love with her best friend—a tall, man­dolin-playing, wildlife-track­ing college professor—who has told her, in no uncer­tain terms, that he is polyamorous. “The amount of love we have to give is not finite,” he says, and she will nod, feign­ing agree­ment. She will then spend hours Googling the terms the man uses, like ethical non-monogamy, and com­per­sion, defined as the flip side of jeal­ousy; she learns that when he talks to her about other women, it should bring her joy, not pain. 

2) The teacher will show up on his front steps every Friday night with a six-pack of local Vermont beer. They will drink togeth­er on his couch while watch­ing episodes of Weeds on his laptop, or some movie that she will forget about the moment his hand brushes her leg. 

3) One evening, the teacher will seduce the man by recit­ing lines from Twelfth Night with such passion that he swoops her up and carries her to his bedroom, where she teases him, “It seems that Shake­speare turns you on,” and he responds, “It’s not his words, it’s the person saying them,” before he kisses her, his beard scratch­ing her cheeks, his strong arms tight around her waist. The teacher will tell her stu­dents that direc­tors devote hours to deter­min­ing when Orsino and Viola’s first kiss will take place, during which scene, after which line. The goal is to make the moment seem both unex­pect­ed and inevitable, and for the audi­ence members to feel it, too, their faces flush­ing red, bodies warm with their own rec­ol­lec­tions of desire.

4) She will hold onto what the man said like a fragile glass orna­ment, will wrap the words in tissue and store them away, taking them out when his name doesn’t appear on her phone for days, and she imag­ines that he is with someone else. She won’t drive over to his house to check, that would be what a jealous Orsino would do, but she knows. Instead, she will take her dog for a walk around her neigh­bor­hood, leaving her phone behind so she can’t hear its silence. 

5) The teacher will tell herself that she won’t see him again, but on New Year’s Eve he gives her a gift that he made while vis­it­ing his parents in Wis­con­sin for Christ­mas, ear­rings crafted from the wood of an olive tree, turned on his father’s lathe. When Viola first visits Olivia to woo her for Orsino, she says, “I bring no over­ture of war; no tax­a­tion of homage; I hold the olive in my hand.” Many direc­tors, the teacher will tell her stu­dents, instruct the actor playing Viola to place her hand on Olivia’s arm when she says the word “olive.” It is their first phys­i­cal contact, and Olivia is a goner. We can tell because the iambic pen­tame­ter she uses starts to break down soon after Viola reaches for her, an extra syl­la­ble here, a missing syl­la­ble there. The teacher will touch the ear­rings each time she wears them, trace their smooth shape, and read too much, as usual, into symbols.

6) As Orsino says, music is the food of love, so when she is alone, the teacher will play the songs that she and the man listen to when they are togeth­er. Gillian Welch and David Rawl­ings. Regina Spektor. The Car­oli­na Choco­late Drops. In the summer, she will buy concert tickets when some of these musi­cians come to town, offer them to him for free. As they sway togeth­er, stand­ing in the crowd, the teacher will ache for the man to hold her hand. He will not.

7) The day before Thanks­giv­ing, she will drive to the man’s house to drop off a loaf of home­made pumpkin bread, arriv­ing at the same time another woman does, pretty with long dark hair. The teacher will shove the still-warm bread pan into his hands, mumble a good-bye, wipe tears away on the drive back to her apartment. 

8) She will call the man late on a Decem­ber night, almost a year after his gift of the olive wood ear­rings, to tell him that she cannot see him anymore, cannot even be friends. She will toss the phone on her unmade bed, the one he never slept in. The teacher will awake the next morning feeling like Viola, washed up on the shores of Illyria, grief-strick­en, having saved herself from drowning.