Study guide

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will

by William Shakespeare

Overview

Author: William Shakespeare (1564–1616), actor, sharer and principal playwright of the Lord Chamberlain's Men
Genre: Romantic comedy, in prose and verse, with songs
Written: About 1600–1601; performed at the Middle Temple on 2 February 1602, as recorded in John Manningham's diary
Early text: One only: the First Folio (1623), a good text probably printed from a careful manuscript
Setting: Illyria, on the eastern coast of the Adriatic: Orsino's court, Olivia's house and garden, and the streets and sea-coast nearby
Sources: The Italian comedy Gl'Ingannati (The Deceived, Siena, 1532) and Barnabe Riche's prose tale 'Of Apolonius and Silla' (1581); the Malvolio plot appears to be Shakespeare's own
Title: Twelfth Night, 5–6 January, ended the Christmas season with feasting and misrule; the subtitle 'What You Will' means 'whatever you like'
Main characters: Viola (disguised as Cesario) and her twin Sebastian; Duke Orsino; the Countess Olivia; her steward Malvolio; her uncle Sir Toby Belch; Sir Andrew Aguecheek; Maria; Feste the fool; Antonio
Key scenes: The willow cabin (1.5), cakes and ale (2.3), 'Patience on a monument' (2.4), the letter scene (2.5), Malvolio cross-gartered (3.4), the dark room (4.2), the recognition (5.1)
Quote text: The modernised text of Project Gutenberg's Complete Works, based on the First Folio

Context

Twelfth Night was written around 1600–1601, in the same years as Hamlet, when Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, was performing at the newly built Globe. It is usually seen as the last and most refined of his romantic comedies, after A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, and before the darker 'problem comedies'. The part of Feste, with its songs and professional wit, was probably written for Robert Armin, the company's new clown, who had replaced Will Kemp around 1599 (Wiles 1987).

The earliest record of a performance is an entry in the diary of John Manningham, a law student at the Middle Temple, for 2 February 1602, the feast of Candlemas. He saw at the Middle Temple's feast 'a play called Twelve Night, or What You Will', which he compared to The Comedy of Errors and to Plautus' Menaechmi, but found most like an Italian play he called 'Inganni'. What struck him most was the trick played on the steward, made to believe that his lady loved him by a forged letter (Sorlien 1976). Leslie Hotson argued that the play was first performed at court on 6 January 1601 before Queen Elizabeth and a visiting Italian nobleman, Virginio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano; the theory is ingenious, but few scholars accept it (Hotson 1954) (Elam 2008).

The title names the last night of the Christmas season, the feast of Epiphany, which in Elizabethan England was a time of feasting, games, disguise and the temporary rule of a Lord of Misrule. Nothing in the play happens on that night, but its spirit of licensed holiday runs through the revels of Sir Toby and the fooling of Feste. C. L. Barber's influential reading treats the play as a 'festive comedy' that releases folly in order to see through it, and later historians have described the seasonal customs on which it draws (Barber 1959) (Laroque 1991).

The main plot comes from a tradition of Italian comedy. In Gl'Ingannati (The Deceived), performed by the Academy of the Intronati at Siena in 1532, a girl disguised as a page serves the man she loves and is sent to woo another woman for him, who falls in love with her; her lost twin brother arrives and is mistaken for her. The story passed through Bandello and Belleforest into English in Barnabe Riche's tale 'Of Apolonius and Silla' (1581). Whether Manningham's 'Inganni' means this play or one of the later Italian comedies with a similar title is uncertain. The gulling of Malvolio, with Toby, Andrew, Maria and Feste, has no known source (Bullough 1958) (Salingar 1958).

The play survives only in the First Folio of 1623, in a clean text with few problems. A small number of loose ends, such as Viola's unused plan to sing, Fabian's taking Feste's intended place in the letter scene, and Orsino being called both Duke and Count, have led some editors to suspect revision (Donno 1985). On the Elizabethan stage Viola, Olivia and Maria were played by boys, so that the comedy of a woman disguised as a young man was played by a young man disguised as a woman (Warren 1994) (Orgel 1996).

Plot overview

Duke Orsino of Illyria is in love with the Countess Olivia, who refuses to see any suitor while she mourns her brother. Viola, shipwrecked on the coast and believing her twin brother Sebastian drowned, disguises herself as a young man, Cesario, and enters Orsino's service. She soon loves Orsino, but he sends her to woo Olivia for him, and Olivia falls in love with Cesario.

In Olivia's household her drunken uncle Sir Toby Belch lives off a foolish knight, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, whom he encourages as a suitor to Olivia. When Olivia's steward Malvolio breaks up their late-night revels, the waiting-gentlewoman Maria takes revenge with a forged letter that persuades Malvolio his lady loves him. Following its instructions, he appears before Olivia in yellow stockings and cross-garters, smiling. She thinks him mad, and the conspirators lock him in a dark room, where Feste the fool, disguised as a curate, torments him.

Meanwhile Sebastian has been rescued by a sea-captain, Antonio, who loves him and follows him into Illyria despite being Orsino's enemy. Toby provokes a mock duel between Andrew and Cesario; Antonio intervenes, is arrested, and accuses Cesario, whom he takes for Sebastian, of betraying him. Olivia meets Sebastian, takes him for Cesario, and marries him in secret.

In the final scene all the confusions meet. Orsino is enraged at Olivia's 'husband' Cesario until Sebastian appears and the twins recognise each other. Viola reveals herself and Orsino promises to marry her. Malvolio, released, learns of the trick and leaves swearing revenge on them all. Feste ends the play alone with a song.

Scene by scene

Scene 1: Act I, Scene 1: Orsino's music

Act I, Scene 1 (the whole scene)

Summary

In his palace Orsino, Duke of Illyria, listens to music and asks for more of it, hoping that too much will cure him of love. Curio invites him to hunt the hart, and he turns the word into a pun: he is himself the hart, pursued by his own desires. Valentine reports that Olivia will not receive him. She has vowed to mourn her dead brother for seven years, veiled like a nun. Orsino takes this as proof of how deeply she will love once love has driven out grief, and goes off to lie among flowers.

Analysis

The play opens not with action but with a mood. Orsino's speech moves restlessly from appetite to surfeit, from the 'dying fall' of a phrase to boredom with it, and the speech itself enacts the changeable 'fancy' it describes. His love feeds on itself: he scarcely mentions Olivia as a person, and the image of Actaeon, the hunter turned into a stag and torn by his own hounds, makes desire a punishment he enjoys. Olivia's vow, reported at second hand, is just as extravagant. The two great households of Illyria are both shut up in self-regarding emotion, and the play will need an outsider to break the spell (Barber 1959).

Some eighteenth- and nineteenth-century acting versions reversed the first two scenes so that the play began with Viola's shipwreck; the Folio order puts Orsino's idleness first and makes Viola's arrival an answer to it (Osborne 1996).

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.

Twelfth Night 1.1

The famous first line is a wish to be cured by excess. Music, food and appetite will run through the whole play.

That instant was I turn’d into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me.

Twelfth Night 1.1

The Actaeon myth from Ovid: Orsino imagines himself as the hunted stag, torn by his own desires.

Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers.

Twelfth Night 1.1

The closing couplet shows Orsino more in love with the luxury of loving than with Olivia.

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Scene 2: Act I, Scene 2: Viola's shipwreck

Act I, Scene 2 (the whole scene)

Summary

Viola, a young noblewoman, has been washed ashore on the coast of Illyria with the captain of her wrecked ship and some sailors. She fears that her twin brother is drowned, but the Captain tells her he saw him bound to a mast, riding the waves 'like Arion on the dolphin's back'. The Captain knows the country and tells her of Duke Orsino's suit to Olivia, a countess who has lost her father and brother and now shuns the company of men. Viola would like to serve Olivia, but that is impossible. She decides instead to disguise herself and enter Orsino's service, asking the Captain to present her as a eunuch who can sing.

Analysis

Viola speaks with a directness that contrasts at once with Orsino. Her first questions are practical: what country is this, who governs here? The pun on 'Illyria' and 'Elysium' sets the place halfway between a real Adriatic coast, known in the period for pirates, and a land of dreams. Her disguise has no single motive. It protects an unmarried woman alone in a strange land, gives her time 'till I had made mine own occasion mellow', and brings her near a man she already knows by reputation.

The plan to be presented as a eunuch who sings is never carried out: Viola never sings in the play, and the songs go to Feste. Editors have taken this as a sign that the play was revised, perhaps when a boy actor's voice broke or when Robert Armin, a skilled singer, joined the company; the evidence is suggestive but not conclusive (Warren 1994) (Elam 2008).

And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium.

Twelfth Night 1.2

The near-rhyme of the two place names sets the play's strange country beside the land of the dead.

Conceal me what I am, and be my aid For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my intent.

Twelfth Night 1.2

Viola's decision to disguise herself, the premise of the whole plot.

What else may hap, to time I will commit; Only shape thou thy silence to my wit.

Twelfth Night 1.2

Viola's trust in time, which she will repeat in 2.2.

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Scene 3: Act I, Scene 3: Sir Toby and Sir Andrew

Act I, Scene 3 (the whole scene)

Summary

In Olivia's house her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, complains of her long mourning, while her waiting-gentlewoman Maria warns him that his late nights and heavy drinking offend his niece. Toby has brought in a rich and foolish knight, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, as a suitor for Olivia, chiefly so that he can live on Andrew's money. Andrew arrives, misunderstands Toby's word 'accost' and is easily outwitted by Maria. Feeling his own dullness, he threatens to ride home, but Toby flatters him into staying by praising his dancing, and the scene ends with Andrew capering.

Analysis

This prose scene introduces the second world of the play, below stairs and after hours. Toby's first line, 'care's an enemy to life', sets out the creed of holiday against Olivia's mourning. Andrew is a comic gull: he wishes he had 'followed the arts', confuses 'tongues' with tongs, and believes beef has harmed his wit. Behind the comedy is money. Toby is exploiting him, as later scenes make plain, and this gives an edge to the revelry (Barber 1959).

Maria wins every exchange. Her quickness here prepares for her authorship of the letter plot, and her wordplay on hands, dryness and the buttery bar shows a woman of low rank using wit as her one form of power (Malcolmson 1991).

What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

Twelfth Night 1.3

Toby's first speech sets the case for revelry against Olivia's grief.

Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit.

Twelfth Night 1.3

Andrew's comic self-knowledge: he half sees his own foolishness but blames his diet.

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Scene 4: Act I, Scene 4: Cesario's errand

Act I, Scene 4 (the whole scene)

Summary

Viola, now dressed as a young man and calling herself Cesario, has been in Orsino's service only three days and is already his favourite. Orsino has confided his whole heart to her. He now sends Cesario to woo Olivia for him, sure that the youth's soft looks and high voice will win a better hearing than an older messenger. Viola agrees, but in an aside she reveals that she has fallen in love with Orsino herself.

Analysis

The scene sets up the love triangle in its simplest form: Viola loves Orsino, who loves Olivia. It also lets the audience enjoy a double vision. Orsino's praise of Cesario's lip and voice as 'semblative a woman's part' is true in a way he does not know, and it reminds the audience that the woman under the disguise was herself played by a boy actor. The play repeatedly asks what an audience is responding to when it finds Cesario attractive (Orgel 1996) (Howard 1988).

Thou know’st no less but all; I have unclasp’d To thee the book even of my secret soul.

Twelfth Night 1.4

Orsino's intimacy with his page; the image of the soul as a book will return in 1.5.

Diana’s lip Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, And all is semblative a woman’s part.

Twelfth Night 1.4

Orsino unknowingly describes the truth under Cesario's disguise, and the boy actor under that.

I’ll do my best To woo your lady. [Aside.] Yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.

Twelfth Night 1.4

Viola's aside completes the triangle: she must woo for the man she loves.

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Scene 5: Act I, Scene 5: Cesario meets Olivia

Act I, Scene 5 (the whole scene)

Summary

Olivia's fool, Feste, returns after an unexplained absence and talks his way back into favour by proving, through a mock catechism, that his lady is the fool for mourning a brother whose soul is in heaven. Olivia's steward Malvolio sneers at the fool, and Olivia rebukes him: he is 'sick of self-love'. Word comes that a young man from Orsino is at the gate and will not go away. Toby, already drunk, is no help. Malvolio's description of the youth, 'between boy and man', makes Olivia curious, and she agrees to receive him with her veil down.

Cesario begins a prepared speech, then breaks off and banters with Olivia, who unveils and mocks the conventional praise of beauty by listing her features like goods in a will. Asked what she would do if she loved as Orsino does, Viola speaks the 'willow cabin' speech. Olivia again refuses Orsino, but asks about Cesario's parentage and invites him to come back. Alone, she realises she has fallen in love with the messenger, and sends Malvolio after him with a ring that, she pretends, Cesario left behind.

Analysis

Feste's first scene establishes his licence. An 'allowed fool', as Olivia calls him, may say what others cannot, and his proof that his mistress is the fool is a small act of healing as well as a joke. Malvolio's contempt for him, and Feste's memory of it, begin the quarrel that ends the play: in Act V Feste will quote Malvolio's words from this scene back at him (Wiles 1987).

The interview between Olivia and Cesario is the play's first great scene. Viola has to act a part ('I am not that I play') and at the same time to plead for a love she does not want to succeed. The willow cabin speech is the most passionate speech about love in the play, and it is spoken by a woman, disguised as a man, on behalf of another man; it works on Olivia because it is really Viola's own feeling. Olivia, who has played the cloistress, falls in love in a few minutes, and her description of love as a plague creeping in at the eyes follows a common Renaissance theory of desire (Elam 2008).

O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite.

Twelfth Night 1.5

Olivia's diagnosis of her steward, which the letter plot will exploit.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house;

Twelfth Night 1.5

The opening of Viola's speech. The willow was the emblem of forsaken lovers.

I’ll be sworn thou art; Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit, Do give thee five-fold blazon.

Twelfth Night 1.5

Olivia, alone, recalls Cesario's words and admits she is falling in love.

Fate, show thy force, ourselves we do not owe. What is decreed must be; and be this so!

Twelfth Night 1.5

Olivia gives herself up to fate: 'owe' means own. We are not our own masters.

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Scene 6: Act II, Scene 1: Sebastian and Antonio

Act II, Scene 1 (the whole scene)

Summary

On the sea-coast Viola's twin brother Sebastian, alive after all, takes leave of Antonio, the sea-captain who rescued him. He has been calling himself Roderigo; now he gives his real name and tells of his father, Sebastian of Messaline, and of the sister he believes drowned. He is going to Orsino's court. Antonio begs to go with him as his servant. Sebastian refuses and leaves, and Antonio, though he has 'many enemies in Orsino's court', decides to follow him anyway.

Analysis

The audience now knows that the twin is alive, and this knowledge changes the comedy: the misunderstandings to come will be watched with confidence that they can be put right. Antonio's devotion is spoken in the strongest terms of the play ('I do adore thee so'), and his willingness to risk his life for Sebastian has been read in very different ways: as idealised male friendship of a kind celebrated in the period, or as erotic love that the comic ending cannot accommodate (Pequigney 1992) (Smith 1991).

If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.

Twelfth Night 2.1

Antonio's plea; to leave him behind would be a kind of killing.

But come what may, I do adore thee so, That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.

Twelfth Night 2.1

The closing couplet of Antonio's speech states his devotion and his danger.

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Scene 7: Act II, Scene 2: The ring

Act II, Scene 2 (the whole scene)

Summary

Malvolio overtakes Cesario in the street and, in Olivia's name, returns the ring that Cesario supposedly left. When Viola denies it, he throws it on the ground and leaves. Viola quickly understands: Olivia sent no ring of Orsino's because there was none, and the gift means that Olivia has fallen in love with Cesario. In a soliloquy she laments that disguise has caused harm, sets out the knot of the triangle, and leaves its untangling to time.

Analysis

This is Viola's one long soliloquy, and it shows her intelligence and sympathy. She feels for Olivia rather than mocking her, and blames disguise itself as 'a wickedness' in which the devil, 'the pregnant enemy', is busy. Calling herself 'poor monster', neither fully man nor woman, she names the double position the disguise has made. Critics have read the lines on women's 'waxen hearts' and 'our frailty' as either a conventional commonplace or a sign of how Viola, even in male dress, still thinks of herself as a woman (Belsey 1985).

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

Twelfth Night 2.2

Viola sees the moral danger of her deception.

How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly, And I, poor monster, fond as much on him, And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.

Twelfth Night 2.2

The triangle summarised in three lines; 'fadge' means turn out.

O time, thou must untangle this, not I, It is too hard a knot for me t’untie!

Twelfth Night 2.2

Viola hands the plot over to time, which will indeed untie it in Act V.

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Scene 8: Act II, Scene 3: Cakes and ale

Act II, Scene 3 (the whole scene)

Summary

Late at night Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are drinking in Olivia's house. Feste joins them and sings 'O mistress mine', and the three roar a catch, 'Hold thy peace'. Maria warns them that Malvolio will be sent to throw them out. Malvolio arrives and scolds them for turning the house into an alehouse, passing on Olivia's message that Toby must mend his ways or leave. Toby and Feste answer him with snatches of a ballad, and Toby asks the famous question about cakes and ale. Malvolio threatens to tell Olivia of Maria's part in the noise and leaves.

Stung, Maria proposes her revenge. Malvolio, she says, is a sort of Puritan, or rather a self-satisfied time-server who believes that everyone who looks at him loves him. She will drop letters in his path, written in a hand like Olivia's, that will make him think his lady loves him. Toby and Andrew are delighted, and go off to drink till morning.

Analysis

This is the heart of the play's festive world and the scene that defines the conflict between holiday and order. 'O mistress mine' is a song about seizing the present ('Youth's a stuff will not endure'), and its gaiety has an undertone of loss. Malvolio's intervention is reasonable in itself: it is the middle of the night and he is doing his job. Toby's reply turns a household dispute into a question of principle about whether virtue has the right to forbid pleasure. C. L. Barber saw the play as a 'festive comedy' that releases misrule in order to understand it, and the steward's opposition to the revels makes him the natural target of a holiday reprisal (Barber 1959) (Laroque 1991).

Maria's description of Malvolio as 'a kind of Puritan' links him with the reforming Protestants who opposed the theatre, drinking and festival customs. She at once qualifies it: his real fault is not religion but vanity. Critics differ on how far the play satirises Puritans and how far it uses the word loosely (Elam 2008) (Hollander 1959).

What is love? ’Tis not hereafter, Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure.

Twelfth Night 2.3

Feste's song recommends living for the present; its carpe diem theme is shadowed by time.

Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time, in you?

Twelfth Night 2.3

Malvolio's rebuke stands for order, propriety and the claims of the household.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Twelfth Night 2.3

Toby's answer has become proverbial, a defence of pleasure against self-righteousness.

the best persuaded of himself, so crammed (as he thinks) with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.

Twelfth Night 2.3

Maria identifies the weakness her letter will work on.

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Scene 9: Act II, Scene 4: Patience on a monument

Act II, Scene 4 (the whole scene)

Summary

At Orsino's court Feste is sent for to sing again the old song the Duke heard the night before. While they wait, Orsino questions Cesario about love and learns that 'he' loves a woman of Orsino's own age and complexion. Orsino declares that men's fancies are more changeable than women's, then, within a few lines, that no woman can love as deeply as he does. Feste sings 'Come away, come away, death', a lament of a lover killed by a cruel maid, and leaves with a jibe at Orsino's opal-like mind. Sent again to Olivia, Viola argues that a woman might love Orsino as he loves Olivia, and tells the story of her father's daughter who never told her love. Asked whether this sister died of it, Viola gives an ambiguous answer and goes on her errand.

Analysis

This quiet scene is the emotional centre of the play. Orsino contradicts himself about the constancy of men and women, and Feste's song gives him the luxurious melancholy he wants. Against this Viola's story of the sister who 'never told her love' describes, in the third person, her own position. The image of Patience on a monument makes her suffering into a kind of statue, still and silent. The dialogue is full of double meanings that only the audience can hear, and for many readers it is here that Viola most clearly becomes the play's heroine (Leggatt 1974).

Viola's riddling answer, that she is all the daughters and all the brothers of her father's house, is true only if Sebastian is dead. It brings the grief of the shipwreck into the love-plot.

For such as I am, all true lovers are, Unstaid and skittish in all motions else, Save in the constant image of the creature That is belov’d.

Twelfth Night 2.4

Orsino describes himself as a model lover, constant only in love.

Come away, come away, death. And in sad cypress let me be laid.

Twelfth Night 2.4

The opening of Feste's song, a lament that suits Orsino's taste for melancholy.

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,

Twelfth Night 2.4

Viola's story of her 'sister', in fact herself.

I am all the daughters of my father’s house, And all the brothers too: and yet I know not.

Twelfth Night 2.4

Viola believes her brother dead but cannot be sure; the line looks forward to the reunion.

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Scene 10: Act II, Scene 5: The letter in the garden

Act II, Scene 5 (the whole scene)

Summary

Toby, Andrew and Fabian, another of Olivia's servants with a grudge against Malvolio, hide in a box-tree hedge in Olivia's garden. Maria drops her forged letter in Malvolio's path. Before he finds it, Malvolio is already daydreaming aloud of marrying Olivia, becoming Count Malvolio, and lecturing 'Cousin Toby' about his drinking, while the hidden men can barely be kept silent.

He picks up the letter, recognises what he takes to be Olivia's hand and seal, and labours over its riddle, 'M.O.A.I. doth sway my life', until he makes the letters fit his own name. The prose part of the letter urges him to cast off humility, be rude to Toby, wear yellow stockings and cross-garters, and smile constantly. He resolves to obey every word and leaves in raptures. Maria tells the others that Olivia hates yellow, detests cross-garters, and is in no mood for smiling.

Analysis

The box-tree scene is one of the great comic set pieces in Shakespeare, built on the three-way relationship between Malvolio, the hidden watchers and the theatre audience. Malvolio's fantasy is revealing before he ever reads the letter: he dreams of power over the household rather than of love, and his vision of Olivia is of a social prize. The letter only feeds a desire that was already there. His reading of 'M.O.A.I.' is a parody of the over-eager interpreter who forces a text to mean what he wants (Elam 2008).

The scene asks the audience to laugh at social ambition, a steward who wants to marry his mistress, but Malvolio's example ('The lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe') reminds us that such marriages did happen. Critics have connected the scene to anxieties about social mobility in a society where Maria herself will marry above her station (Malcolmson 1991). In 2.3 Maria said the fool would make the third watcher; here it is Fabian, a small inconsistency in the Folio text.

Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes!

Twelfth Night 2.5

Fabian's image of Malvolio as a strutting turkey-cock.

In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

Twelfth Night 2.5

The most quoted lines of the letter, flattering Malvolio's ambition.

Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and wished to see thee ever cross-gartered.

Twelfth Night 2.5

The fashion advice that will make Malvolio ridiculous.

I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-device, the very man.

Twelfth Night 2.5

Malvolio's resolutions show his wish for status and his contempt for the household.

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Scene 11: Act III, Scene 1: Feste and Olivia's declaration

Act III, Scene 1 (the whole scene)

Summary

Viola, arriving at Olivia's house, exchanges jokes with Feste, who calls himself not Olivia's fool but 'her corrupter of words', and begs coins from her. After he leaves, Viola reflects that playing the fool well takes real intelligence. Toby and Andrew greet her, and Andrew admires her courtly phrases. Olivia sends everyone away and, alone with Cesario, confesses that she sent the ring herself. Viola says only that she pities her. When Olivia asks what Cesario thinks of her, they exchange riddling lines about being and not being what they are. Olivia then declares her love openly in rhymed couplets. Viola swears that no woman shall ever be mistress of her heart and leaves, though Olivia asks her to come again.

Analysis

Feste's wordplay about words ('A sentence is but a chev'ril glove to a good wit') comments on the whole play, in which language, like clothes, can be turned inside out. Viola's speech on the fool's art is one of the clearest tributes to the professional clown in Shakespeare and may reflect the skills of Robert Armin, who probably first played Feste (Wiles 1987).

In the interview with Olivia the play reaches its densest ironies. 'I am not what I am' is literally true of Viola. Olivia, the proud countess, abandons decorum and woos a servant, and her shift into rhyme marks a loss of control. Viola's oath that 'no woman has' her heart, 'save I alone', is a riddle that the audience can solve and Olivia cannot.

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool, And to do that well, craves a kind of wit:

Twelfth Night 3.1

Viola's tribute to Feste and to the art of the professional fool.

That you do think you are not what you are.

Twelfth Night 3.1

Viola tells Olivia she is mistaken about herself, in love with a woman she takes for a man.

Then think you right; I am not what I am.

Twelfth Night 3.1

Viola's reply is an open statement of her disguise that Olivia cannot understand.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

Twelfth Night 3.1

The end of Olivia's declaration in couplets, a maxim to justify her forwardness.

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Scene 12: Act III, Scene 2: Andrew's challenge

Act III, Scene 2 (the whole scene)

Summary

Sir Andrew, having seen Olivia's favour to Cesario, again threatens to leave. Fabian and Toby persuade him that Olivia was only trying to provoke him, and that he must win her by an act of valour: he should challenge Cesario to a duel. Andrew goes off to write the challenge. Toby admits to Fabian that he has had some two thousand ducats out of Andrew. Maria arrives to report that Malvolio is in yellow stockings and cross-gartered, smiling like a madman.

Analysis

A short connecting scene that sets two plots running together. Toby's frankness about the money he has taken from Andrew shows the cost of his good fellowship, and his manipulation of a timid man into a fight is less innocent than the earlier fun. Maria's report prepares for the climax of the letter plot in the next scene but one.

I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician.

Twelfth Night 3.2

Andrew names the Brownists, a radical separatist sect, as the worst thing he can think of.

He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the augmentation of the Indies.

Twelfth Night 3.2

Maria's comic image probably refers to a recent world map showing the East Indies in new detail.

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Scene 13: Act III, Scene 3: Antonio's purse

Act III, Scene 3 (the whole scene)

Summary

Antonio has followed Sebastian into the town and explains that he came out of fear for his safety in a strange country. He must keep out of sight, because he once fought against Orsino's ships in a sea-fight and is a wanted man. He gives Sebastian his purse in case he wants to buy something, and arranges to meet him at an inn called the Elephant. Sebastian goes off to see the sights.

Analysis

Antonio's speech joins love and anxiety, and the gift of the purse is a token of his trust. It also sets up the mistake in the next scene, in which he asks the wrong twin for the money back. His danger reminds us that Illyria has a political world of fleets and enemies outside the households of the comedy.

I could not stay behind you: my desire, More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth;

Twelfth Night 3.3

Antonio's devotion, put in terms of physical urgency.

Hold, sir, here’s my purse. In the south suburbs, at the Elephant, Is best to lodge.

Twelfth Night 3.3

The purse and the meeting place, which will lead to misunderstanding.

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Scene 14: Act III, Scene 4: Midsummer madness and the duel

Act III, Scene 4 (the whole scene)

Summary

Olivia, waiting for Cesario, sends for Malvolio, whom she thinks 'sad and civil'. He appears in yellow stockings and cross-garters, smiling, and quotes the letter at her. She concludes that this is 'very midsummer madness' and asks Toby to look after him. Malvolio takes this as part of the letter's plan. Toby, Maria and Fabian treat him as a man possessed by a devil, and he leaves in contempt. Toby proposes to have him bound in a dark room as a madman.

Andrew's absurd challenge is read aloud. Toby decides not to deliver it but to frighten each of the reluctant duellists with reports of the other's ferocity. After a further meeting in which Olivia gives Cesario a jewel with her picture, Toby and Fabian terrify Viola, who comes close to revealing that she is a woman. Just as the swords are drawn Antonio enters and defends Cesario, whom he takes for Sebastian. Officers arrest him on Orsino's orders. He asks for his purse, and when Viola, who has never seen him, denies knowing him, he accuses 'Sebastian' of ingratitude. The name gives Viola sudden hope that her brother lives.

Analysis

The longest scene in the play gathers its plots together. Malvolio's appearance is the comic peak of the letter plot, and the actor must make his smile, his stockings and his quotations from the letter both ridiculous and pitiful. The talk of devils and possession shifts the joke towards something darker: the treatment of madness in the period included confinement in darkness, and the plan to bind him is described as a 'pastime' that will end only when its authors are tired. Fabian's line about an 'improbable fiction' is a joke at the play's own expense (Barber 1959).

The mock duel shows Viola at her most exposed: 'A little thing would make me tell them how much I lack of a man.' Antonio's speech on ingratitude turns the comedy of mistaken identity into real pain for him, and his moral lines on outward beauty and inward vice are among the most serious in the play. The scene ends with Viola's rhymed hope that her brother is alive, a turning point that looks toward the recognition (Elam 2008).

Not black in my mind, though yellow in my legs.

Twelfth Night 3.4

Malvolio's self-satisfied joke; black and yellow stand for melancholy and jealousy.

Why, this is very midsummer madness.

Twelfth Night 3.4

Olivia's verdict. Midsummer was associated with madness, as Twelfth Night was with misrule.

If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

Twelfth Night 3.4

Fabian's joke reminds the audience that it is watching a play.

In nature there’s no blemish but the mind; None can be call’d deform’d but the unkind.

Twelfth Night 3.4

Antonio's lament: true deformity is moral, not physical.

Prove true, imagination, O prove true, That I, dear brother, be now ta’en for you!

Twelfth Night 3.4

Viola's hope that she has been mistaken for her brother.

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Scene 15: Act IV, Scene 1: Sebastian is taken for Cesario

Act IV, Scene 1 (the whole scene)

Summary

Feste, sent to fetch Cesario, meets Sebastian and refuses to believe he is a stranger. Andrew arrives and strikes Sebastian, believing him to be the timid page, and Sebastian beats him soundly. Toby draws on Sebastian, but Olivia enters, furiously orders her uncle away, and begs 'Cesario' to come into her house. Sebastian, bewildered by this beautiful stranger, decides that if this is a dream he would gladly keep dreaming, and goes with her.

Analysis

The twin plot now works in the other direction: Sebastian is mistaken for Viola. The comedy lies in the reversal of expectations, as the supposedly cowardly youth fights back and the mourning countess seizes a stranger by the hand. Feste's comic phrase 'Nothing that is so, is so' captures the confusion of identities. Sebastian's willingness to accept Olivia's love without explanation has seemed to some readers too quick, but it fits the play's view of love as a kind of welcome madness.

Nothing that is so, is so.

Twelfth Night 4.1

Feste's paradox summarises the confusion of mistaken identities.

Or I am mad, or else this is a dream. Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep; If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!

Twelfth Night 4.1

Sebastian gives himself up to the dream; Lethe was the river of forgetfulness.

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Scene 16: Act IV, Scene 2: Sir Topas and the dark room

Act IV, Scene 2 (the whole scene)

Summary

Malvolio has been shut in a dark room. Maria gives Feste a gown and beard so that he can play Sir Topas, a curate come to visit the lunatic. In the priest's voice Feste insists that the room is full of light, that Malvolio is possessed, and that he will not be sane until he holds Pythagoras' opinion that his grandmother's soul might live in a bird. Toby, now worried about his own standing with Olivia, wants the game ended. Feste then speaks in his own voice, singing, and after acting both himself and Sir Topas in a little dialogue, agrees to bring Malvolio light, paper and ink so that he can write to Olivia. He leaves singing a song about the Vice of the old morality plays.

Analysis

This is the scene that has most troubled modern audiences. Malvolio's repeated 'I am not mad' and 'this house is dark' are true, and the joke depends on a sane man being told he is insane. Feste's catechism parodies the questioning of the possessed, and the scene has been linked to contemporary controversies about exorcism. Maria's remark that the disguise was unnecessary because Malvolio cannot see him draws attention to Feste's pleasure in performance for its own sake (Greenblatt 1988) (Elam 2008).

Feste's role as the Vice, with his dagger of lath, makes the tormentor a figure from old drama, both comic and devilish. Yet Feste also helps Malvolio to the means of writing, and the letter will free him in Act V. Toby's wish to be 'well rid of this knavery' marks the moment when holiday begins to turn sour (Barber 1959).

Madman, thou errest. I say there is no darkness but ignorance, in which thou art more puzzled than the Egyptians in their fog.

Twelfth Night 4.2

Sir Topas inverts Malvolio's complaint; the Egyptian darkness comes from the plagues of Exodus.

I am not mad, Sir Topas. I say to you this house is dark.

Twelfth Night 4.2

Malvolio's plain truth, which no one in the scene will accept.

I would we were well rid of this knavery.

Twelfth Night 4.2

Toby, fearing Olivia's anger, wants the sport to stop.

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Scene 17: Act IV, Scene 3: Sebastian's wonder

Act IV, Scene 3 (the whole scene)

Summary

Alone in Olivia's garden, Sebastian holds the pearl she gave him and reasons with himself. The world around him is real, and he is not mad; neither, it seems, is Olivia, since she runs her household so calmly. Yet the good fortune is beyond explanation. Olivia returns with a priest and asks him to plight his faith to her in secret in the chapel nearby, and Sebastian agrees.

Analysis

Sebastian's soliloquy is a quiet reply to the madness theme of the previous scene. Malvolio is told he is mad when he is sane; Sebastian asks whether he is mad and decides, rationally, that he is not. His conclusion that 'There's something in't / That is deceivable' shows a mind willing to accept wonder without understanding it. Olivia's haste to marry a man she has known for an hour completes her reversal from the cloistered mourner of Act I.

This is the air; that is the glorious sun, This pearl she gave me, I do feel’t and see’t, And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus, Yet ’tis not madness.

Twelfth Night 4.3

Sebastian tests reality by the evidence of his senses.

I’ll follow this good man, and go with you, And having sworn truth, ever will be true.

Twelfth Night 4.3

Sebastian agrees to the secret betrothal.

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Scene 18: Act V, Scene 1: Recognition and revenge

Act V, Scene 1 (the whole scene)

Summary

Orsino comes at last to Olivia's house in person. Antonio is brought in under arrest and tells how the youth beside Orsino, whom he takes for Sebastian, has betrayed his love. Olivia arrives, calls Cesario 'husband', and the priest confirms that they have just been contracted. Orsino turns in fury on his page and threatens to kill 'the lamb that I do love'. Andrew and Toby enter with broken heads, blaming Cesario. Then Sebastian himself appears. Everyone stares at the two identical figures; the twins question each other about their father, and Viola reveals that she is a woman. Orsino, recalling that Cesario often said he would never love a woman as he loved his master, takes Viola's hand and asks to see her in women's clothes. These, Viola says, are kept by the sea-captain, now imprisoned at Malvolio's suit.

Malvolio is sent for, and his letter from the dark room is read. He confronts Olivia with the forged letter. She recognises Maria's hand, and Fabian confesses the plot, adding that Toby has married Maria. Feste mocks Malvolio with his own words from Act I, and Malvolio leaves vowing revenge on 'the whole pack of you'. Orsino sends after him to make peace and closes the play with a promise of marriage once Viola is in her 'woman's weeds'. Alone, Feste sings 'When that I was and a little tiny boy'.

Analysis

The recognition is managed with deliberate slowness. Viola insists on testing each circumstance before she will embrace her brother, and the exchange about their father's mole and his death on Viola's thirteenth birthday makes the reunion feel like a ritual. Orsino's phrase 'A natural perspective, that is, and is not!' compares the twins to an optical illusion produced by nature itself. Sebastian's line to Olivia that she is 'betroth'd both to a maid and man' makes a joke of the confusion while hinting that her love for a disguised woman was not simply an error (Frye 1965) (Greenblatt 1988).

The ending is famous for what it leaves open. Viola never appears in women's clothes, because the Captain who holds them is in prison through Malvolio, who has left in anger; Orsino still calls her Cesario. Antonio, whose love began the play's second plot, has no lines after the twins are reunited. Malvolio's exit line breaks the comic harmony, and Orsino's 'Pursue him, and entreat him to a peace' leaves the outcome uncertain. Feste's last song, about the rain that 'raineth every day', returns the audience from holiday to ordinary time (Barber 1959) (Jardine 1992).

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons! A natural perspective, that is, and is not!

Twelfth Night 5.1

Orsino's wonder at the twins; a 'perspective' was an optical device that produced illusions.

So comes it, lady, you have been mistook. But nature to her bias drew in that. You would have been contracted to a maid;

Twelfth Night 5.1

Sebastian explains Olivia's mistake as nature following its own course, like a bowl curving on its bias.

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Twelfth Night 5.1

Feste's reply to Malvolio's insult in 1.5: time has turned the wheel.

I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

Twelfth Night 5.1

Malvolio's exit line, the one discord in the final harmony.

A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that’s all one, our play is done, And we’ll strive to please you every day.

Twelfth Night 5.1

The last stanza of Feste's song closes the holiday and addresses the audience.

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Characters

Orsino's court

Viola: A young noblewoman of Messaline, shipwrecked in Illyria, who disguises herself as the page Cesario and enters Orsino's service. Quick-witted, warm and resourceful, she falls in love with Orsino but must woo Olivia for him. Her disguise gives her a freedom of speech and action that she uses with tact, and her speeches on concealed love are the emotional heart of the play. Even at the end she remains in her male clothes.
Orsino: Duke (sometimes called Count) of Illyria. He loves the idea of being in love with Olivia, delights in music and melancholy, and contradicts himself about the constancy of men and women. His affection for his page Cesario grows steadily, and he transfers his love to Viola with a speed that some audiences find touching and others find hard to trust.
Valentine and Curio: Gentlemen attending on Orsino, who carry his messages and fetch Feste to sing.

Olivia's house

Olivia: A rich countess who has vowed to mourn her brother for seven years. She falls in love at first sight with Cesario and abandons her reserve to woo him, then marries his twin Sebastian by mistake. She is the head of her household and rules it firmly, but she too is a victim of self-deception in love.
Malvolio: Olivia's steward, grave, efficient and self-important. Olivia calls him 'sick of self-love', and Maria calls him 'a kind of Puritan'. Gulled by the forged letter into believing Olivia loves him, he is made to look ridiculous and then treated as a madman. His final vow of revenge leaves the ending unsettled, and since the eighteenth century many actors and critics have found him a figure of pathos as well as comedy.
Feste: Olivia's fool, also welcome at Orsino's court. He sings the play's songs, turns words inside out, and sees through everyone's pretensions. He plays Sir Topas the curate in the dark-room scene, and he closes the play with a song. Witty, mercenary and melancholy, he stands somewhat apart from the other characters.
Sir Toby Belch: Olivia's uncle, a hard-drinking knight who lives in her house and leads its revels. He defends cakes and ale against Malvolio, but he also lives on Sir Andrew's money and manipulates him cruelly. He marries Maria offstage at the end.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek: A rich, timid and foolish knight whom Toby keeps as a hopeless suitor for Olivia. He is the comic gull of the subplot, easily flattered and easily frightened, and he ends with a broken head and Toby's contempt.
Maria: Olivia's waiting-gentlewoman, small, sharp and inventive. She writes the forged letter that traps Malvolio, imitating her mistress's hand, and is rewarded by marriage to Sir Toby.
Fabian: A servant of Olivia's who has fallen out of favour through Malvolio. He joins the letter plot and the mock duel, and in the last scene confesses the trick and pleads that it should provoke laughter rather than revenge.
Priest: The priest who contracts Olivia and Sebastian and testifies to it in Act V.

Travellers

Sebastian: Viola's twin brother, rescued from the shipwreck by Antonio. Brave and good-natured, he fights off Andrew and Toby and accepts Olivia's love with bewildered gratitude. His arrival makes the comic resolution possible.
Antonio: A sea-captain, once Orsino's enemy in a sea-fight, who rescues Sebastian and follows him into danger out of passionate devotion. Arrested and apparently betrayed by the youth he loves, he is the most isolated figure at the end, and his love for Sebastian is central to modern debates about desire in the play.
The Captain: The captain of Viola's ship, who helps her disguise herself and keeps her women's clothes. He is mentioned in the last scene as imprisoned at Malvolio's suit, and never reappears.

Themes

Love, desire and self-love

Almost every character in the play is in love with someone who cannot or will not return it, and much of this love is really love of an image. Orsino loves loving Olivia; Olivia loves a youth who does not exist; Malvolio loves the status that Olivia could give him; Sir Andrew loves only the idea of a rich match. Viola's love for Orsino, patient and unspoken, is the one that the play rewards (Leggatt 1974).

The play's language makes love an appetite and a disease. Orsino asks for music as food, Olivia catches love 'like the plague', and Malvolio is 'sick of self-love'. Love is shown both as folly and as the force that drives the plot towards its happy ending.

Disguise and identity

Viola's disguise is the play's central device. It allows her to know Orsino as a friend before she can be his wife, and to speak to Olivia as no woman could. But it also traps her, and she calls it 'a wickedness'. The twins, identical in face and dress, turn the question of identity into a comic puzzle that only their meeting can solve (Salingar 1958).

The play is full of other disguises and roles: Olivia's veil, Feste's curate's gown, Malvolio's yellow stockings, Maria's imitation of her mistress's handwriting. 'I am not what I am', Viola's line, could be said by many characters.

Festivity and its limits

The title points to the holiday spirit of the Christmas season, and the play celebrates music, drinking, jokes and the overturning of order. Toby's cakes and ale stand against Malvolio's rule of 'place, persons, nor time'. Barber argued that such festive comedy moves 'through release to clarification': the holiday lets the characters act out their follies and so understand them (Barber 1959).

Yet the play also shows the costs of holiday. Toby exploits Andrew, the joke against Malvolio becomes imprisonment, and the revellers end with broken heads. Feste's final song sets the festival in the context of a life where 'the rain it raineth every day' (Hollander 1959) (Laroque 1991).

Folly and wisdom

Feste, the professional fool, is often the wisest person on stage. He proves Olivia a fool for mourning, shows Orsino his changeable mind, and plays with words in a way that exposes their slipperiness. Viola recognises that his art 'craves a kind of wit'. The play suggests that everyone is a fool in some way, and that the wise accept it, while those who think themselves above folly, like Malvolio, are most foolish of all (Wiles 1987).

Class and ambition

The play is set in great households where rank matters. Malvolio's dream of becoming Count Malvolio is laughed at because a steward should not hope to marry his lady, but Olivia marries a stranger she knows nothing about, and Maria, a gentlewoman servant, marries Sir Toby. Critics have read the play as anxious about social mobility, letting some characters cross boundaries while punishing the one who does so most openly (Malcolmson 1991).

Time and melancholy

Viola trusts time to untangle the knot, and Feste says that 'the whirligig of time brings in his revenges'. The songs return again and again to youth that 'will not endure', to death and to the passage of a life. Beneath its comedy the play is touched by mourning: for Olivia's brother, for Viola's supposedly drowned twin, and for the end of the holiday itself.

Motifs

Music and song

The play begins with music and ends with a song,, and nearly all the songs belong to Feste. 'O mistress mine', 'Come away, come away, death' and 'When that I was and a little tiny boy' each comment on the action, and music is linked throughout with love, melancholy and time.

Madness

Characters repeatedly call one another mad: Olivia thinks Malvolio has 'midsummer madness', Sebastian wonders if he or Olivia is mad, Antonio is called mad when he tells the truth. The play blurs the line between the madness of love and the madness ascribed to Malvolio.

The sea and shipwreck

The sea separates the twins and brings them back. Orsino compares his love to the sea, which swallows everything, and Antonio is a sea-fighter. Viola's last hope, 'Tempests are kind, and salt waves fresh in love!', turns the shipwreck into a source of comic fortune.

Letters and tokens

Forged and real letters, rings, jewels, a pearl and a purse pass between characters and are misread. The ring Olivia sends after Cesario, Maria's letter, Andrew's challenge and Malvolio's letter from the dark room each change the course of the plot.

Twins and doubles

Viola and Sebastian are the central doubles, but the play pairs much else: two households, two suitors for Olivia, two plots. Orsino's 'One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons' expresses the wonder of doubleness.

Symbols

Yellow stockings and cross-garters

The costume that Maria's letter prescribes makes Malvolio ridiculous because it shows his ambition so openly. Yellow was associated with jealousy, and Maria compares cross-gartering to the dress of a country schoolmaster; together they mark the grave steward turned peacock.

The dark room

Malvolio's prison stands for the darkness of ignorance and of madness that the tricksters try to impose on him. Feste insists 'there is no darkness but ignorance', and the scene makes the audience ask who is really in the dark.

The ring

The ring that Olivia sends after Cesario is a token of a love that Viola immediately understands but cannot return, and the play's rings return in the priest's account of Olivia's betrothal.

Viola's 'maiden weeds'

The women's clothes that Viola never puts on. Held by the imprisoned Captain, they symbolise the identity she must recover before the ending can be completed, and their absence leaves her, on stage, still Cesario.

The willow cabin

In Viola's speech to Olivia the willow cabin, a shelter built of the willow worn by forsaken lovers, stands for devoted, unanswered love. It is an image of Viola's own feeling for Orsino.

Critical debates

Is Malvolio wronged?

For much of its history the play was valued for the comedy of Malvolio's gulling, and Manningham singled it out in 1602. From the early nineteenth century, when Charles Lamb recalled an actor who made the steward almost tragic, Malvolio has often been played as a figure of real suffering, and the dark-room scene has seemed cruel. John Hollander and C. L. Barber argued that Malvolio is rightly punished because he denies the festive spirit and wants to rule others (Hollander 1959) (Barber 1959).

Later critics have stressed the class politics of the trick and Malvolio's real humiliation, noting that Olivia herself says he 'hath been most notoriously abus'd'. Performance history shows the role changing with each generation, from comic coxcomb to wounded outsider (Malcolmson 1991) (Potter 1985).

Festive comedy

Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959) read Twelfth Night against the customs of the Elizabethan holiday, seeing the play as a dramatic version of the release and return of a festival. Northrop Frye, in a similar spirit, saw the comedies as moving from an old, rigid society to a new and freer one (Barber 1959) (Frye 1965).

Critics since have asked how far the play endorses holiday. Laroque and others have described the complexity of Elizabethan festive culture, and readings that stress the play's melancholy, its exploitation and its unresolved ending suggest that it marks the limits of festivity as much as it celebrates it (Laroque 1991) (Hollander 1959).

Sources and the first performances

Manningham's diary entry is the most important evidence for the play's date and early reception, and his comparison with The Comedy of Errors, Plautus and an Italian 'Inganni' points to the comic traditions behind it. Bullough reprints the main sources, including Gl'Ingannati and Riche's tale; Salingar showed how Shakespeare transformed the Italian material, especially by making the heroine's love more patient and the plot more poetic (Sorlien 1976) (Bullough 1958) (Salingar 1958).

Hotson's claim that the play was first performed at Whitehall on Twelfth Night 1601 before the Duke of Bracciano has been widely rejected, but it drew attention to the possible court and Inns of Court contexts of the comedy (Hotson 1954) (Elam 2008).

Cross-dressing and the boy actor

Because Viola was played by a boy, the play involves several layers of gender performance. Some critics have seen the disguise as liberating, allowing a woman to speak and act freely; others note that the disguise is temporary and that the play returns Viola to her proper place. Jean Howard set the play in the context of controversies about cross-dressing in Elizabethan London (Howard 1988).

Catherine Belsey argued that the comedies briefly disrupt the fixed opposition between male and female, and Stephen Orgel examined how the boy actor made the erotic appeal of the cross-dressed heroine ambiguous. Lisa Jardine connected the attractions of Cesario to the sexual availability of boys and servants in early modern households (Belsey 1985) (Orgel 1996) (Jardine 1992).

Antonio and same-sex desire

Antonio's love for Sebastian is expressed in the language of adoration and devotion, and he is left alone at the end. Joseph Pequigney argued that the relationship is homoerotic and that the play treats it sympathetically; Bruce Smith placed it among Renaissance discourses of male friendship and desire (Pequigney 1992) (Smith 1991).

Valerie Traub and Casey Charles have extended the argument to Olivia's love for Cesario and Orsino's for his page, arguing that the play allows desires that cross gender before the marriages re-establish heterosexual order. Others warn against reading modern categories of sexuality back into Elizabethan friendship (Traub 1992) (Charles 1997).

The unresolved ending

The final scene unites the lovers but leaves several things open: Viola remains in male dress, the Captain is in prison, Antonio is silent, and Malvolio leaves in anger. Some readers see these loose ends as a deliberate refusal of complete comic harmony; others see them as the natural marks of a play written quickly for performance (Elam 2008) (Warren 1994).

Stephen Greenblatt, setting the play beside a French medical case of a hermaphrodite who lived first as a woman and then as a man, argued that the comedy's erotic energy comes from verbal and bodily 'friction' between the sexes, and that the ending reasserts difference only provisionally (Greenblatt 1988).

Feste and the songs

Feste is the play's commentator, and his songs set its moods. David Wiles linked the role to the skills of Robert Armin, a clown with a more intellectual and melancholy style than his predecessor Kemp (Wiles 1987).

The last song, 'When that I was and a little tiny boy', has divided critics: some find it a moving summary of a human life, others a piece of clowning to dismiss the audience. Its stanzas move from childhood to old age and from the play's world to the audience's 'every day' (Hollander 1959) (Elam 2008).

Key passages

If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die.

Orsino · Twelfth Night 1.1

The opening lines present love as an appetite and music as its food, and show Orsino's indulgent melancholy.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate, And call upon my soul within the house;

Viola · Twelfth Night 1.5

Viola, speaking for Orsino, describes what she would do if she loved; the passion of the speech is really her own, and it wins Olivia's heart for Cesario.

O time, thou must untangle this, not I, It is too hard a knot for me t’untie!

Viola · Twelfth Night 2.2

Viola recognises the love triangle and leaves its resolution to time, which the play will bring about.

Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?

Sir Toby · Twelfth Night 2.3

Toby's defence of pleasure against Malvolio's sour virtue states the play's conflict between festivity and order.

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud, Feed on her damask cheek:

Viola · Twelfth Night 2.4

Viola's story of her 'sister' describes her own hidden love for Orsino.

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.

Malvolio (reading Maria's letter) · Twelfth Night 2.5

The forged letter flatters Malvolio's ambition; the line returns twice later in the play.

Then think you right; I am not what I am.

Viola · Twelfth Night 3.1

Viola speaks the truth of her disguise in a way Olivia cannot understand.

Why, this is very midsummer madness.

Olivia · Twelfth Night 3.4

Olivia's judgement on Malvolio's behaviour, which leads to his confinement as a madman.

And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.

Feste · Twelfth Night 5.1

Feste reminds Malvolio of his earlier contempt for the fool; time has turned the tables.

I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.

Malvolio · Twelfth Night 5.1

Malvolio's last line leaves the comedy's harmony incomplete.

Questions for study

How do the first two scenes contrast Orsino and Viola, and what do they lead us to expect?
Compare Orsino's music and self-absorption with Viola's practical questions and her decision to act.
Why does Viola disguise herself, and what does the disguise allow her to do that she could not do otherwise?
Think about her safety, her freedom of speech with Orsino and Olivia, and her own description of disguise in 2.2.
Is Olivia's love for Cesario a mistake that the play corrects, or something more?
Look at Sebastian's lines about nature's 'bias' in 5.1 and at what attracts Olivia in 1.5.
How far is Malvolio's punishment deserved?
Weigh his behaviour in 1.5 and 2.3, his fantasy in 2.5, the dark-room scene and Olivia's final comment.
What is Feste's role in the play, and why does he end it alone?
Consider his relations with both households, his songs, his part as Sir Topas and the final song.
How does the play present Sir Toby? Is he simply a lovable reveller?
Think of cakes and ale, but also of Andrew's money, the mock duel and his last words to Andrew.
What part does Antonio play, and how does the ending treat him?
Trace his speeches of devotion and the accusation of ingratitude in 3.4, and notice how little he says in 5.1.
How do music and song shape the mood of the play?
Compare the opening music, 'O mistress mine', 'Come away, death' and the final song.
How does the play use the theme of madness?
Collect the characters who are called mad or think themselves mad, and ask who is really deceived.
Does the final scene bring a complete comic resolution?
Think about Viola's clothes, the Captain, Antonio, Malvolio's exit and Feste's song.