Themes of Twelfth night

Love as a Cause of Suffering

Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact
that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve
wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view
love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various
characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited
love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and
cannot; at another point, he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds. Olivia more bluntly describes
love as a “plague” from which she suffers terribly. These metaphors contain an element of
violence, further painting the love-struck as victims of some random force in the universe. Even
the less melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that “My state is desperate for my master’s love.
This desperation has the potential to result in violence—as in Act V, scene i, when Orsino
threatens to kill Cesario because he thinks that -Cesario has forsaken him to become Olivia’s
lover.

Love is also exclusionary: some people achieve romantic happiness, while others do not. At the
end of the play, as the happy lovers rejoice, both Malvolio and Antonio are prevented from
having the objects of their desire. Malvolio, who has pursued Olivia, must ultimately face the
realization that he is a fool, socially unworthy of his noble mistress. Antonio is in a more
difficult situation, as social norms do not allow for the gratification of his apparently sexual
attraction to Sebastian. Love, thus, cannot conquer all obstacles, and those whose desires go
unfulfilled remain no less in love but feel the sting of its absence all the more severely.

The Uncertainty of Gender

Gender is one of the most obvious and much-discussed topics in the play. Twelfth Night is one of
Shakespeare’s so-called transvestite comedies, in which a female character—in this case,
Viola—disguises herself as a man. This situation creates a sexual mess: Viola falls in love with
Orsino but cannot tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsino’s
affection, falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario. There is a clear homoerotic subtext here: Olivia
is in love with a woman, even if she thinks he is a man, and Orsino often remarks on Cesario’s
beauty, suggesting that he is attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. This
latent homoeroticism finds an explicit echo in the minor character of Antonio, who is clearly in
love with his male friend, Sebastian. But Antonio’s desires cannot be satisfied, while Orsino and
Olivia both find tidy heterosexual gratification once the sexual ambiguities and deceptions are
straightened out.

Yet, even at the play’s close, Shakespeare leaves things somewhat murky, especially in the
Orsino-Viola relationship. Orsino’s declaration of love to Viola suggests that he enjoys
prolonging the pretense of Viola’s masculinity. Even after he knows that Viola is a woman,
Orsino says to her, “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never should’st love
woman like to me. Similarly, in his last lines, Orsino declares, “Cesario, come— / For so you
shall be while you are a man; / But when in other habits you are seen, / Orsino’s mistress, and his
fancy’s queen. Even once everything is revealed, Orsino continues to address Viola by her male
name. We can thus only wonder whether Orsino is truly in love with Viola, or if he is more
enamoured of her male persona.

The Folly of Ambition

The problem of social ambition works itself out largely through the character of Malvolio, the
steward, who seems to be a competent servant, if prudish and dour, but proves to be, in fact, a
supreme egotist, with tremendous ambitions to rise out of his social class. Maria plays on these
ambitions when she forges a letter from Olivia that makes Malvolio believe that Olivia is in love
with him and wishes to marry him. Sir Toby and the others find this fantasy hysterically funny,
of course—not only because of Malvolio’s unattractive personality but also because Malvolio is
not of noble blood. In the class system of Shakespeare’s time, a noblewoman would generally
not sully her reputation by marrying a man of lower social status.

Yet the atmosphere of the play may render Malvolio’s aspirations less unreasonable than they
initially seem. The feast of Twelfth Night, from which the play takes its name, was a time when
social hierarchies were turned upside down. That same spirit is alive in Illyria: indeed,
Malvolio’s antagonist, Maria, is able to increase her social standing by marrying Sir Toby. But it
seems that Maria’s success may be due to her willingness to accept and promote the anarchy that
Sir Toby and the others embrace. This Twelfth Night spirit, then, seems to pass by Malvolio,
who doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace the upending of order and decorum but rather wants to blur
class lines for himself alone.

Love and Desire

Love and desire function as powerful drivers of plot because they seem to strike suddenly and
unpredictably, and because they render characters helpless to change their feelings. Olivia is
startled and somewhat dismayed to recognize the desire she feels in response to Cesario. Viola
echoes this sentiment when, finding herself trapped in a love triangle with Olivia and Orsino, she
says that “It is too hard a knot for me to untie. When Malvolio starts to believe that Olivia is in
love with him, he reasons that “Tis but fortune, all is fortune. Even though it seems surprising
that a high-ranking woman like Olivia would be romantically interested in her own employee,
Malvolio believes that Olivia’s love for him is a step toward his true destiny. Likewise, Sebastian
doesn’t seek a logical explanation for Olivia’s strange behavior, trusting that their relationship is
an “accident and flood of fortune. For most of the characters, with the notable exception of
Malvolio, this strategy works well, since by the end of the play, everyone has found a partner
they are happy with.

Disguise and Deception

When she first finds herself stranded in Ilyria, Viola decides to “conceal me what I am,
entrusting only the Captain with her secret. As a young woman who could be vulnerable to
attack or sexual assault, she is also much safer if she is disguised as a man. However, Viola
quickly learns the cost of maintaining a disguise. Her intentions and actions are constantly
misinterpreted, and she cannot correct these mistakes without betraying her secret. While
disguise and deception cause serious difficulties for Viola, and even threaten her life when
Orsino falsely believes that Cesario has stolen Olivia away from him, the play also suggests that
disguise can serve a positive purpose as well. In a time when women were expected to follow
strict rules of social decorum, Viola’s masculine disguise gives her the chance to speak her mind
much more freely. This shift is most apparent in the scene where Orsino and the disguised Viola
argue about how men and women behave in love. Viola stands up for women, arguing that “In
faith, they are as true of heart as we.

Gender and Sexuality

In the play, gender and sexuality are portrayed as ambiguous, unstable, and sometimes fluid.
When Viola disguises herself as a man, she stipulates that “thou shall present me as an eunuch
too[the Duke. In some cultures and historical periods, young men would be castrated in order to
enter specific occupations, often as personal servants to high-ranking individuals, or in positions
where they would have close contact with women. As a eunuch, Viola would be viewed as not
quite a woman, and not quite a man. Both Orsino and Olivia recognize that Viola defies
traditional binary gender conventions. Orsino comments about Cesario that “all is semblative a
woman’s part Interestingly, Viola’s ambivalent gender position seems to only make her more
attractive. Other storylines also echo the idea of a fluid form of desire not rooted in gender.
Orsino’s relationship with Cesario might simply be a close and affectionate friendship, but it also
seems to hint at romantic elements, such as when he refers to Cesario as one “…whom, by
heaven I swear, I tender dearly. However, while the play introduces elements of fluidity and
ambiguity, it closes with a firmly heteronormative conclusion.

Plot Analysis
Twelfth Night is a play about desire’s power to override conventions of class, religion, and even
gender. Several characters begin the play believing they want one thing, only to have love teach
them they actually want something else. Orsino thinks he wants Olivia, until he falls in love with
Viola (dressed as Cesario.) Olivia thinks she wants to be left alone to mourn her brother, until
she also falls in love with Cesario. She then thinks she wants Cesario, until she meets Sebastian.
Malvolio thinks he wants to be a straight-laced Puritan, until the prospect of Olivia’s favor
causes him to act like a fool. As Twelfth Night is a play about overturning the social order, the
most sophisticated characters prove to have the least self-knowledge, while the least
sophisticated characters easily see through the pretensions of their so-called superiors. Desire
acts as a leveling force, forcing characters to gain self-knowledge. Orsino realizes his love for
Olivia is misguided, Olivia abandons her vow not to love for seven years, and Malvolio is
revealed as the pompous jerk he really is. Feste the Fool has the last word, ending the play with a
bittersweet song suggesting the darker aspects of reality lurk under the frivolity and merriment of
the play.

Because the play is primarily about the power desire has over people, love-struck characters who
cannot come together provide both the forward momentum and the source of conflict in Twelfth
Night’s plot. The first conflict we encounter involves Orsino and Olivia. In the first scene, we
learn that Duke Orsino believes himself very much in love with Olivia. Olivia, on the other hand,
is determined to mourn her brother’s death and has sworn to stay cloistered for seven years
without showing her face. She will therefore not accept the overtures of a suitor (at least not this
one). We immediately suspect the sincerity of the two characters’ decisions. Duke Orsino, for
instance, seems enamored more by the idea of pining for Olivia than the actuality of courting her,
and would rather outsource the hard work of his romance to an emissary like Cesario. Similarly,
Olivia’s grief is showy and self-conscious. Both characters are frozen in their self-regard, and
require some external force to activate them.

Viola’s arrival incites change in the other characters. Of the main characters, she is by far the
most willful, and serves as an obvious contrast to Olivia and Orsino. Unlike Orsino and Olivia,
Viola is purposeful and decisive: she knows what she wants and she sets about trying to get it.
Her actions are propulsive, setting the story in motion, whereas the actions of Orsino and Olivia
are reactive. In Act I, scene v, Viola, disguised as Cesario, sets off to woo Olivia on Orsino’s
behalf. The interchange between Orsino, Cesario, and Olivia set up the central conflict of the rest
of the play, and introduce the idea that love and desire can transcend gender. Olivia believes
Cesario is a boy, but as Orsino says, Cesario makes a very feminine boy: “all is semblative a
woman’s part.” (I.iv.). Despite (or because of) Cesario’s resemblance to a woman, Olivia falls in
love, while Cesario is developing feelings for Orsino. None of the lovers’ affections are requited,
and Viola’s disguise as Cesario has complicated the plot to the point that even Viola feels
helpless to untangle the mess: “It is too hard a knot for me to untie!”

In Act II, scene one, Sebastian and Antonio are introduced and the audience learns that, rather
than drowning at sea, Sebastian is alive, and believes his sister, Viola, is dead. Sebastian’s
announcement of his plan to go to Duke Orsino’s court increases the dramatic tension, as the
audience understands a reunion of the siblings is inevitable. Once Sebastian arrives in Illyria, he
lashes out violently against Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, and accepts Olivia’s amorous advances.
The characters think Sebastian is Cesario and treat him accordingly, while Sebastian has no idea
why he is being treated this way. The audience knows the reason behind the misunderstanding,
increasing the tension as we wonder when the plot will finally untangle. Meanwhile, Viola
unwittingly betrays Sebastian’s friend Antonio. The mayhem increases further with Maria, Toby,
and Andrew’s plot to humiliate Malvolio, whose bizarre behavior gets him locked up. The
riotous pile-up of confusion and mistaken identities further strains the precarious configuration
of love interests and Viola’s struggle to uphold her identity as Cesario. Something must break
and soon, the question is just when and where this crack will take place.

Once all of the characters are present in one place in Act V, the exposure of identities becomes
both inevitable and imminent. Once Cesario and Sebastian are seen together, Viola’s disguise is
no longer tenable. Rather than being dismayed by the revelation of Viola’s deception, neither
Olivia nor Orsino seems to mind having been fooled by her. Olivia is just as happy married to
Viola’s twin, Sebastian, while Orsino is eager to marry Cesario now that he knows Cesario is
really a woman. Curiously, Orsino seems in no hurry for Cesario to change back to into a dress.
Olivia and Orsino’s ease in switching their emotions (Olivia from one person to another, Orsino
from friendship to romantic love) substantiate our sense from the beginning that both characters
are somewhat shallow and fickle. More importantly, the play ends happily for Viola, who is
reunited with her beloved brother and joined in marriage with her beloved Orsino. The play ends
with a series of marriages (Viola and Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian, Maria and Sir Toby) that
untangle the confusion and restore order and civility to Illyria.
Protagonist
Viola is the protagonist of the play. She begins the play in an unfortunate and vulnerable
position, having been shipwrecked in a strange land where she does not know anyone. Her first
desire is to figure out the customs and power dynamics of Ilyria without revealing her true
identity. This desire drives the plot forward because it leads her to assume a disguise as Cesario.
However, once Viola is installed in Orsino’s household, a new desire appears: she falls in love
with Orsino, and realizes that “myself would be his wife. Viola’s two desires are now in conflict
with one another, and each prevents the other from being realized. She cannot explain her love to
Orsino without revealing her true identity, and maintaining her disguise requires her to hide her
feelings. Viola’s predicament leaves her largely unable to act or influence the actions of other
characters.

Not only can Viola not take any actions to be with Orsino, she unintentionally drives him further
away. Viola’s good looks and charm (as Cesario) lead Olivia to fall in love with her, creating a
secondary conflict. Again, Viola cannot disclose the information that would resolve the conflict,
and is forced to tell Olivia repeatedly that “I have one heart… And that no woman has, nor never
none / Shall mistress be of it. Viola’s conflict is resolved through the intervention of fortune and
luck rather than through her own actions. Since it turns out that Sebastian has survived the
shipwreck, he can take the place of Cesario in Olivia’s affections. With Olivia happily married,
and with the support of her brother, Viola can safely reveal her own identity. Once Viola reveals
that she’s really a woman, Orsino reciprocates her affection, proclaiming that she shall be his
wife. At the end of the play, Viola gets everything she wants, and the seemingly disastrous
events have actually been propelling her toward a happy fate.

Motifs
Letters, Messages, and Tokens

Twelfth Night features a great variety of messages sent from one character to another—
sometimes as letters and other times in the form of tokens. Such messages are used both for
purposes of communication and miscommunication—sometimes deliberate and sometimes
accidental. Maria’s letter to Malvolio, which purports to be from Olivia, is a deliberate (and
successful) attempt to trick the steward. Sir Andrew’s letter demanding a duel with Cesario,
meanwhile, is meant seriously, but because it is so appallingly stupid, Sir Toby does not deliver
it, rendering it extraneous. Malvolio’s missive, sent by way of Feste from the dark room in which
he is imprisoned, ultimately works to undo the confusion caused by Maria’s forged letter and to
free Malvolio from his imprisonment.

But letters are not the only kind of messages that characters employ to communicate with one
another. Individuals can be employed in the place of written communication—Orsino repeatedly
sends Cesario, for instance, to deliver messages to Olivia. Objects can function as messages
between people as well: Olivia sends Malvolio after Cesario with a ring, to tell the page that she
loves him, and follows the ring up with further gifts, which symbolize her romantic attachment.
Messages can convey important information, but they also create the potential for
miscommunication and confusion—especially with characters like Maria and Sir Toby
manipulating the information.

Madness

No one is truly insane in Twelfth Night, yet a number of characters are accused of being mad, and
a current of insanity or zaniness runs through the action of the play. After Sir Toby and Maria
dupe Malvolio into believing that Olivia loves him, Malvolio behaves so bizarrely that he is
assumed to be mad and is locked away in a dark room. Malvolio himself knows that he is sane,
and he accuses everyone around him of being mad. Meanwhile, when Antonio encounters Viola
(disguised as Cesario), he mistakes her for Sebastian, and his angry insistence that she recognize
him leads people to assume that he is mad. All of these incidents feed into the general
atmosphere of the play, in which normal life is thrown topsy-turvy, and everyone must confront
a reality that is somehow fractured.

Disguises

Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola, who puts on male
attire and makes everyone else believe that she is a man. By dressing his protagonist in male
garments, Shakespeare creates endless sexual confusion with the Olivia-Viola--Orsino love
triangle. Other characters in disguise include Malvolio, who puts on crossed garters and yellow
stockings in the hope of winning Olivia, and Feste, who dresses up as a priest—Sir Topas—
when he speaks to Malvolio after the steward has been locked in a dark room. Feste puts on the
disguise even though Malvolio will not be able to see him, since the room is so dark, suggesting
that the importance of clothing is not just in the eye of the beholder. For Feste, the disguise
completes his assumption of a new identity—in order to be Sir Topas, he must look like Sir
Topas. Viola puts on new clothes and changes her gender, while Feste and Malvolio put on new
garments either to impersonate a nobleman (Feste) or in the hopes of becoming a nobleman
(Malvolio). Through these disguises, the play raises questions about what makes us who we are,
compelling the audience to wonder if things like gender and class are set in stone, or if they can
be altered with a change of clothing.

Mistaken Identity

The instances of mistaken identity are related to the prevalence of disguises in the play, as
Viola’s male clothing leads to her being mistaken for her brother, Sebastian, and vice versa.
Sebastian is mistaken for Viola (or rather, Cesario) by Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, and then by
Olivia, who promptly marries him. Meanwhile, Antonio mistakes Viola for Sebastian, and thinks
that his friend has betrayed him when Viola claims to not know him. These cases of mistaken
identity, common in Shakespeare’s comedies, create the tangled situation that can be resolved
only when Viola and Sebastian appear together, helping everyone to understand what has
happened
Symbols
Olivia’s Gifts

When Olivia wants to let Cesario know that she loves him, she sends him a ring by way of
Malvolio. Later, when she mistakes Sebastian for Cesario, she gives him a precious pearl. In
each case, the jewel serves as a token of her love—a physical symbol of her romantic attachment
to a man who is really a woman. The gifts are more than symbols, though. “Youth is bought
more oft than begged or borrowed,” Olivia says at one point, suggesting that the jewels are
intended almost as bribes—that she means to buy Cesario’s love if she cannot win it (III.iv.3).

The Darkness of Malvolio’s Prison

When Sir Toby and Maria pretend that Malvolio is mad, they confine him in a pitch-black
chamber. Darkness becomes a symbol of his supposed insanity, as they tell him that the room is
filled with light and his inability to see is a sign of his madness. Malvolio reverses the
symbolism. “I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell; and I
say there was never man thus abused. In other words, the darkness—meaning madness—is not in
the room with him, but outside, with Sir Toby and Feste and Maria, who have unjustly
imprisoned him.

Changes of Clothing

Clothes are powerful in Twelfth Night. They can symbolize changes in gender—Viola puts on
male clothes to be taken for a male— as well as class distinctions. When Malvolio fantasizes
about becoming a nobleman, he imagines the new clothes that he will have. When Feste
impersonates Sir Topas, he puts on a nobleman’s garb, even though Malvolio, whom he is
fooling, cannot see him, suggesting that clothes have a power that transcends their physical
function.

Comedy
Twelfth Night can be considered a model Shakespearean comedy in that it employs nearly every
feature of the genre: a wedding, mistaken identities, misunderstandings, physical comedy, and a
happy ending. Like all of Shakespeare’s comedies, the play ends with a wedding – in this case,
the joint wedding of two sets of lovers: Olivia and Sebastian, and Viola and Orsino. Also as in
many other comedies, the lovers are initially kept apart through misunderstandings, which lead
to plot complications. Olivia falls in love with Cesario, (who is really Viola in drag,) but Viola
can’t return Olivia’s love. Similarly, Viola falls in love with Orsino, who, believing Viola is
Cesario, refuses to return her love. Only once true identities are revealed can the lovers unite
with their appropriate partners. In addition to the preposterous plot, cross-dressing, and
misunderstandings, the play abounds in silliness. While the main characters are pursuing the
wrong partners, the Fool, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew provide plenty of comic relief in the
form of ridiculous rhymes, songs, double entendre, and antics.

Within all the silliness, however, Twelfth Night offers an exploration of desire as a fickle,
overriding force of nature strong enough to overturn the social order. Shakespearean comedies
often take place in societies where the social order is out of whack. In Twelfth Night, erotic
desire wreaks havoc on the flimsy structures society has put in place. Under normal
circumstances, the noble-born Olivia should not fall in love with a servant like Cesario, who (in
disguise at least) occupies a lower social position. Likewise, Duke Orsino, who is pining for
Olivia, should not feel an erotic pull toward Viola while she is masquerading as a boy servant.
The speed and ease with which lovers shift from one object of desire to another (Orsino loves
Olivia but then switches to Viola; Olivia has sworn off love to mourn her brother’s death but
then quickly decides she loves Cesario; later she switches to Sebastian) underscores the erratic
and all-consuming character of erotic yearning. In the play, desire hops about from person to
person with little regard for social status, gender, or other limits that civil society has deemed
important.

At the same time, while the play concludes in a happy tone for its noble-born, heterosexual
characters, palpable notes of discord remain for others. Malvolio and Antonio are two such
unfortunates, left unpaired by the play’s conclusion. Malvolio has failed to win Olivia’s heart
because of his lower social status and his humorless Puritanism, while Antonio’s feelings for
Sebastian, which can be read as possibly homoerotic in nature, remain unsatisfied. Feste the
Fool’s final song adds another dash of bitterness to what should be a cheerful end. While we are
asked to rejoice at the imminent marriages of the central characters, Feste’s song reminds us that
marriage is difficult, long, and sometimes fails to bring about happiness: “But when I came, alas!
to wive/…By swaggering could I never thrive. These departures from a more conventional finale
are like a gentle wake-up call, rousing us from pleasant dreams and sending us back into the real
world, where love (and the foolishness it engenders) is not always so harmless.