Blog post #3

Twelfth Night is a play written by Shakespear and was a comedy, which also had a lot of irony throughout it. I wanted to use Voyant tools to test a theory that I had. Given that the play is ironic, I wanted to see if there was a connection between the word “fool” and the character Feste, also known as the Clown. The Clown is supposed to be the least intelligent and jokester of the play. However, he appears to be the most intelligent and Viola even points that out. The tools I used to check my theory are Stream Graphs and Trends. Both of these tools checked to see the amount of times the words were used throughout the play. They both check how they are relative to each other and if there is any connection that can be made. I thought it was quite interesting to see that in the Trends graph, when the Clown was mentioned that fool was used significantly less. There was also only one instance where the word “fool” was used more than the word “clown” in the Trend graph. The Stream Graph pointed out that there was an inverse relationship between the two words. Whenever the word “fool” was used a significant amount, the word “clown” was barely used. Both of these graphs go to prove my point that Feste the Clown may be the smartest of the characters. Both graphs also did a good job of showing the inverse relationship between the words. Feste is dressed as a clown and may be looked at as an idiot but is actually quite intelligent. Viola even stated that Feste’s witticism requires a great deal of intelligence and skill, and is comparable to the work of a scholar or wise man. Feste has a strange part in the play. He mostly sits out on the sidelines and waits for the perfect time to make an entrance. Viola is clearly taking note of this great skill that Feste has. Feste himself knows that he is surrounded by idiots himself. Malvolio who is referred to as a highly intelligent character in the beginning of the play ends up being the main fool of the entire play. The reason I chose the two tools that I used was to see the most simple way to connect the two words together. I believe the tools did a great job of helping me prove my theory. The tools themselves were very easy to use and provided a better understanding of the play for me. The only issue that I have with the tools is that, someone who knows little to none about the book would be extremely confused. Having an understanding of the play is important to be able to use these tools. At the end of the day, the tools did their job and helped me prove my theory. 

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=e4dd0630b6d18b0a472f440912a82ddd&query=sir&query=toby&query=olivia&query=viola&query=malvolio&mode=document&view=Trends

https://voyant-tools.org/?corpus=e4dd0630b6d18b0a472f440912a82ddd&view=Phrases