Under “Context” I pointed out that the title Twelfth Night conveys an “end of the holidays” feeling. The alternative title, Or, What You Will, invites audiences and readers to enjoy the comedy but also to find their own meaning. Broader even than As You Like It, which is non-specific enough, What You Will points to the multidimensional truths that mix and mingle in Shakespeare’s mature comedies.

A Plea for Clarity and Truthfulness

Not So Funny?

The suffering inherent in mortal life often breaks through the cheerful surface of Twelfth Night. Shakespeare’s loss of his young son Hamnet is woven into the comedy’s texture. I much enjoy the comedy and love stories in Twelfth Night, but to a degree these aspects are generic and superficial. They comprise only a part of the play’s exploration of the reality experienced by humans.

Seize the Day

The logical but ultimately inadequate human response to transience, the carpe diem theme favoured by Elizabethan poetry—Gather ye roses while ye may, meaning “Enjoy youth, beauty and love while you can”–appears frequently in Twelfth Night.

For example:

• In the music that Orsino loves, the sweetness “had a dying fall…’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.”
• In Act 1, Scene 5, lines 240-44 Viola applies to Olivia a message found in Shakespeare’s sonnets, that the beauty of the loved man or woman should be preserved in children. Olivia’s humorous counter-proposal in prose, to compile a catalogue of her attractions for future generations, doesn’t solve the problem either. 
• The “mutability” theme—reminders of the transience of youth and beauty—takes various forms in the dialogue between Orsino and Cesario in Act 2, Scene 4.

Paradoxically since he is a fool, Feste is the main vehicle for Twelfth Night‘s mutability theme. “Feste has kept us continually aware of the realities of death and time” (Barton 177). These realities take various shapes in his solo songs, “O mistress mine!” (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 37-50); “Come away, come away, death” (Act 2, Scene 4, lines 50-65); and the play’s epilogue, “When that I was a little tiny boy” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 385-405).

                     “[A] strain of sadness, attributable in part to Feste’s songs, hovers over the entire play.” (Schiffer, p. 2). 

Time

The calendar of Twelfth Night is impressionistic rather than exact. Valentine says Orsino has known Cesario for only three days (Act 1, Scene 4, line 3), meaning that only three days have passed since the shipwreck, but Antonio, a victim of the same shipwreck, says he has been in Illyria for three months (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 93 and 99).

Despite this inconsistency, time and its passing are important themes in Twelfth Night, which is imbued with a frequent theme of Shakespeare’s sonnets, that the time of youth and romantic love is short. 

Death

Both as a past reality and a future prospect, death pervades Twelfth Night. References are imported into dialogues and situations that are otherwise comic or neutral. Can you add more death references to the list below?

1.Viola’s and Sebastian’s parents and Olivia’s father have died.

2.Viola fears that Sebastian has died in the shipwreck, and vice versa.

3. Maria warns Feste that being sacked by Olivia is “as good as a hanging to you.” (This prospect is defeated by Feste’s witty response, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 16-20.)

4. Malvolio too refers (hopefully?) to Feste’s death, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 23-25.

4. Olivia points out that the drunk Sir Toby needs a coroner: “he’s drowned,” Act 1, Scene 5, lines 129-34.

5.Antonio will accompany Sebastian to Orsino’s court, even though to do so risks death, Act 2, Scene 2, lines 46-47.

6. Sir Toby and Feste challenge Malvolio by singing the ballad, “Farewell dear love.” Sir Toby asserts: “But I will never die,” but Feste contradicts: “Sir Toby, there you lie” (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 106-107).

7. In the time that has passed since the Priest has married Olivia and (as he thinks) Cesario, “my watch hath told me, toward my grave/I have travelled but two hours.” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 170-171).

Wisdom and Folly

Twelfth Night explores wisdom and folly in human beings. In Hamlet, which Shakespeare wrote at about the same time, wisdom isn’t confined to the educated upper classes, but manifests in grave-diggers. In Twelfth Night, as argued in our discussion of Feste’s character, it is sometimes to be found in a fool. In Act 2, Scene 3, lines 16-17, Feste’s invitation to Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, himself and (by implication) the audience, to see themselves as “the picture of ‘We Three’ [fools]” recognises the hard truth–that no one, however learned or thoughtful, is immune from making foolish mistakes.

[See Keir Elam’s excellent discussion, illustrated by popular historical portraits of “We Three,” pp. 10-14.]

Class

In the world of Twelfth Night the social order is primary and unchallenged. It is built firstly on land ownership–Orsino’s and Olivia’s–and secondly on membership of the gentry class: Viola, Sebastian, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew all belong to this privileged class.

Cesario-Viola explains to Olivia that his/her parentage is “Above my fortunes, yet my state is well. /I am a gentleman” (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 282-283). Later, in soliloquy, Olivia attributes Cesario’s qualities to his/her claimed status: “I’ll be sworn thou art./Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit/ Do give thee fivefold blazon” (i.e., a coat of arms, lines 294-98). Olivia’s love for Cesario-Viola does not challenge her identification with her class. Dominating the audience’s attention, Orsino’s fantasy love for Olivia also conforms. In the play’s climax the twins’ marriages raise them to the status of landowners. This is the “Cinderella” aspect of Twelfth Night‘s plot. You’ll remember that in the fairy tale a kitchen girl from a respectable family climbs above her station by marrying a prince.

In Shakespeare’s England, inherited land conferred a higher status than land acquired by purchase. Even so, Schoenbaum, Greenblatt and other biographers recount Shakespeare’s efforts to recoup his father’s losses and regain respect as a house and land holder. The same desire for status is obvious in his purchase of a coat of arms. But Twelfth Night presents Malvolio’s dream to rise in the world by becoming Olivia’s husband as laughable and misguided. Founded in deception and fed by delusion, his attempt to resist the social order leads to imprisonment as a madman. His departing threat: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you!” (Act 5, Scene 1, line 401) is a vain attempt to extend a fantasy. Malvolio is never viable as a rebel or as a critic of the Elizabethan social order. In fact, his fate is a warning for anyone who might want to follow his example. At the end of Twelfth Night the Elizabethan class structure remains intact.

Romantic Love

The last of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, Twelfth Night expresses insights that time has taught an experienced lover. The approach to love, both courtly and common, is complex, nuanced, profound, and by no means always positive.

Twelfth Night distinguishes among different kinds of love, some true, loyal and other-directed, others delusory and selfish.

A. Orsino is not in love with Olivia–he is in love with his image of himself as a lover; his passion is narcissism based on self deception;
B. Urged on by Sir Toby, Sir Andrew hopes to share Olivia’s wealth and status by marrying her;
C. Viola’s self sacrifice in honestly and disinterestedly wooing Olivia on Orsino’s behalf is true love;
C. Sebastian’s love is opportunistic but validated at marriage by his commitment to be true to Olivia;
D. Malvolio uses what he has been tricked into seeing as Olivia’s attraction to him as a vehicle for ambition and revenge;
E. For Sir Toby love is indistinguishable from getting what he wants. He marries Maria out of admiration for her cleverness.

If you would like to dive more deeply into the love themes of Twelfth Night, I recommend Stephen Greenblatt’s essay, “Fiction and Friction,” in Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, ed. C. Heller, Morton Sosna, and David E. Wellbery. (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1986), pp. 30-52.

Greenblatt writes:

“[T]he comedies from Taming of the Shrew to Twelfth Night entailed above all the representation of the emergence of identity in the experience of erotic heat….if sexual chafing could not be literally presented on stage, it could nonetheless be figuratively represented: friction could be fictionalized, chafing chastened and hence made fit for the stage, by transformation into the lovers’ witty, erotically charged sparring.” (pp. 48-49)

Greenblatt’s article, which has become a classic, repays reading and thinking about in its entirety.

Gender

More than most of Shakespeare’s plays, Twelfth Night complicates the rigidities of gender. In the first scene a boy actor playing a girl takes on the role of a boy. She does so less zestfully than Rosalind does in As You Like It. In As You Like It Rosalind resumes female clothing for her wedding, but in Twelfth Night the boy actor’s girlhood is never visually restored. Orsino merely requests and predicts this return to a “feminine” gender identity, which on Shakespeare’s stage was always in any case a delusion.

More significantly, in Twelfth Night the gendered adjectives “masculine” and “feminine” are often attached inappropriately to male and female bodies (or to actors pretending to be male or female). In courting Olivia, Viola is active and enterprising (“masculine”), in contrast with Orsino (“feminine”) who, despite his military experience testifying to an active past, passes his time in melancholy longing. Orsino’s inactivity contrasts with Orlando’s athleticism in As You Like It.  But if Orsino loves Olivia so much, why doesn’t he visit her himself? It is not until Act 5 that Sebastian’s beating of Sir Toby and Sir Andrew–after Viola-Cesario has so “femininely” resisted a duel with Sir Andrew–finally succumbs to audiences’ gender expectations. Yet the twins’ mutual recognition and joyful reunion are an ongoing challenge to gender distinctions, as boy and girl rediscover their shared family history which is the reason for their alikeness. What they rediscover their alikeness, not their difference.

Gay Men and Gay Love

In Twelfth Night Shakespeare took advantage of a limited freedom to destabilise heterosexual norms through honest self-expression.

Like Antonio in The Merchant of Venice, who loves and loses his friend Bassanio, Antonio in Twelfth Night is left alone after Sebastian’s marriage is the first of the heterosexual comings-together prescribed by genre and society.

Ancient Sparta built its military prowess partly on homosexual love, but even today, and despite the occasional “coming out” of sporting heroes, gay men are sometimes stereotyped as physically weak or morally inept. Shakespeare is ahead of his time in pairing Antonio’s homosexuality with heroism. The latter is seen in:

• his rescue of Sebastian from shipwreck (Act 2, Scene 1, lines 36-37; Act 5, Scene 1, lines 76-77);
• his defence of Cesario (whom he mistakes for Sebastian) against Sir Andrew and Sir Toby (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 326-331);
• his renown as the captain of a warship (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 46-95),

In virtually every utterance, Antonio expresses love and care for Sebastian, e.g.:

But come what may, I do adore thee so
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go. (Act 2, Scene 1, lines 46-47).

Antonio speaks the word “love” more often than any other character in Twelfth Night.

The loose end of Antonio’s lost love will continue to engage thoughtful viewers and readers of Twelfth Night as a coded communication to gay or bisexual men.

Despite the intransigence of society and the law, after his accession in 1603 King James’ own obvious but never spoken-of bisexuality must have given heart to such men. A covert change in attitudes may explain the publication in 1609 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, including eighteen passionate addresses to a young man, which had earlier circulated only in manuscript.

Gay Women?

Madness

Drunkenness and Revelry

Sir Toby precedes his famous question about Malvolio’s virtue with another: “Art any more than a steward?” A knight by birth, Sir Toby implies that middle-class people like Malvolio devote themselves to abstinence only because “cakes and ale” are out of reach. Meanwhile aristocrats such as himself are free to enjoy these pleasures without restraint.

Entangled as it is with concerns of class, the debate in Twelfth Night between sobriety and excess appears in others of Shakespeare’s plays, such as Henry IV and Antony and Cleopatra. Shakespeare understands both the delights and the dangers of excess.

Puritans, or, How to Sit on a Fence

Maria suggests: “sometimes [Malvolio] is a kind of Puritan.” Puritans, who condemned the theatre as immoral, were a frequent target of stage satire. Shakespeare’s dialogue following nevertheless exonerates Puritans at Malvolio’s expense, as Maria revises her attribution and condemns Malvolio for other reasons:

“The devil a Puritan that he is, or anything constantly but a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass that cons state without book and utters it by great swathes; 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, ….” (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 134-146).

[“time-pleaser”: opportunist, someone who takes advantage whenever he can; “affectioned”: affected, pretentious; “cons state without book”: learns condescending behaviour naturally, without having to study it; “utters it in great swathes”: speaks it in huge chunks]

In Sir Andrew’s assertion about an extreme Puritan sect, “I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician” (Act 3, Scene 2, lines 31-32), the target remains ambiguous, especially if Sir Andrew’s habit of relying on others for his opinions is taken into account.

A Comedy? Truly?

• Antonio’s unhappiness and possible fate as Orsino’s prisoner are overlooked in the ending.
• Feste’s closing song is full of doubt. If “the rain it raineth every day,” how lasting can the three couples’ happiness be? How lasting can anyone’s happiness be in a world where suffering is certain and joy, for most people, merely a passing experience or a hope?

Twelfth Night raises profound questions about the nature of comedy itself. Some of the scenes responded to by generations of play-goers as funny conceal a tragic edge.

“Twelfth Night is not of Hamlet’s cosmological scope, but in its own very startling way it is another ‘poem unlimited.’ One cannot get to the end of it, because even some of the most apparently incidental lines reverberate infinitely.” (Bloom, p. 227)