Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night’s central theme is love, including romantic, platonic, and familial love. Many of the characters in the play express their love for others, from Viola and Sebastian’s love as siblings to the romantic love triangle between Cesario, Orsino, and Olivia, to Antonio’s love for Sebastian. By the end of the play, many of the central characters are happily in love. Despite this, for much of the play, love is viewed as a cause of suffering, as characters are distraught and wracked with emotion over their unrequited loves. Orsino, for instance, describes his desires for Olivia as “fell and cruel hounds” (I.1.23), and later describes Olivia as “sovereign cruelty” (II.4.89). Viola describes her unrequited love for Orsino as distinctly melancholy, saying that she “pined in thought, / And with a green and yellow melancholy/ […] sat like Patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief” (II.5.124-127).

Antonio’s love for Sebastian also brings him suffering, as it inspires his decision to accompany Sebastian in Illyria despite his trouble with Count Orsino. “For [Sebastian’s] sake/ Did I expose myself, pure for his love, / Into the danger of this adverse town,” Antonio tells Orsino (V.1. 80-82). He also suffers when he believes that Sebastian has betrayed him—though it is Cesario, and not Sebastian, who claims not to recognize him. The familial love between Sebastian and Viola, too, is cause for unhappiness until the end, as each sibling believes the other to be dead and mourns their loss. Olivia is also mourning the loss of her own brother, whom she initially had planned to spend seven years mourning at the start of the play.

Throughout Twelfth Night, gender and sexuality are sites of fluidity, play, and performance. Essential to remember is that in Shakespeare’s time, all of the plays performers would have been male because women and girls were not allowed to act on stage until 1660 (Ziegler, Georgianna. “The First English Actresses.” Shakespeare & Beyond, 19 Jan. 2019, https://shakespeareandbeyond.folger.edu/2019/01/22/the-first-english-actresses/.) Viola, then, would have been a male actor pretending to be a woman (Viola) pretending to be a man (Cesario) who then reveals that she is actually a woman. The staging, like the text, depends on the idea that gender can be communicated through performance rather than innate identity, and Viola’s successful disguise as the male Cesario shows how perception of gender depends largely on presentation rather than nature.

Orsino’s declaration that women are incapable of deep love is a statement that telegraphs a view of male superiority, but as the play shows, Viola’s love—for both Orsino and Sebastian—belies this view. She pushes against Orsino’s suggestion that women are not capable of loving as deeply as men, claiming that their hearts “lack retention” (II.4.106). “We men may say more, swear more, but indeed / Our shows are more than will,” Cesario says, saying that unlike women, who love truly and deeply, men “prove / Much in our vows but little in our love” (II.5.128-130). Similarly, Olivia mourns her brother but also runs her household, showing a strength and independence that is unquestioned by the other characters. Her autonomy is never undermined. These characterizations of powerful women stand in contrast to some parts of the text. After Viola reveals herself, Orsino comments on how, as Cesario, she has done “so much against the mettle of your sex” (V.1.339). Even Viola seems to emphasize women’s weakness compared with men, saying in a monologue that her and Olivia’s unrequited loves can be blamed on their “frailty” and naturally weaker disposition as women (II.2.31).

While the end of the play puts together only heterosexual couples, Shakespeare also implies a sexual fluidity. Some characters’ sexual orientations are left vague; Antonio’s love for Sebastian, for instance, has a homoerotic subtext. Orsino’s deep affection for and immediate bonding with Cesario also demonstrates a strong attraction, and though Orsino embraces Viola as a woman, he does not renounce Cesario. Rather, he suggests that Cesario is still in the picture, especially while Viola is still wearing his clothes. 

Disguise and deception are rampant throughout Twelfth Night, with the play’s central deception, of course, being Viola’s disguise as Cesario. Sir Toby and his friends deceive others frequently throughout the play through acts of trickery, from Maria’s letter to Malvolio and Toby’s lies to get Cesario and Andrew to fight with each other, to the Fool disguising himself as Toby when he talks to Malvolio in a dark room. Olivia also carries out several deceptive acts when she first meets Cesario: she conceals her identity when Cesario first enters by disguising herself with a veil, and then pretends Cesario has left a ring with her in order to get their attention and implore Cesario to come back. Sebastian, too, hid his true identity from Antonio while they were on the ship together—for unknown reasons, he told Antonio that his name was Roderigo.

Much of this deception plays into the play’s spirit of revelry and fun, though Sir Toby and his friends do face some consequences for their actions. Toby eventually wants to stop the prank on Malvolio because he’s already in trouble with Olivia, and his plan to get Andrew and Toby to duel ends poorly with Sebastian actually hurting them in a fight. After finding out Maria and Toby have tricked him with the fake letter, Malvolio exits vowing revenge “on the whole pack of you” (V.1.401), showing that not all of the play’s deceptions were happily resolved.