Let’s brighten things up this week with one of Shakespeare’s comedies, not tragedies. This week I’d like to take a look at the play Twelfth Night (Or What You Will). This was the last Shakespeare play that I read.
Now, I’m sure many of you know the story (even if you don’t know it). This play revolves around the heroine, Viola. Her story starts when her ship crashes, killing nearly everyone aboard. This leads Viol to believe that her twin brother, Sebastian has drown. In her grieving, she decides to disguise herself as a eunuch (a man who has been castrated), and give her service to Duke Orsino, Duke of Illyria. Orsino is lovesick over the fair maiden Olivia, and sends Cesario (Viola) to tell Olivia of his love. One thing leads to another, and Orsino begins to fall for Cesario, often commenting on how beautiful of a man he is, and Olivia also begins to fall in love with Cesario. And poor Viola can’t show her affections towards the duke and has another woman buying for her love. And then things get even messier when it turns out that Sebastian isn’t dead. Being twins it is only natural that people mistake Sebastian and Cesario for each other. And Olivia, thinking he is Cesario, ends up engaged to Sebastian. But in the end everyone finds out the Cesario is actually a girl. So the duke and Viola can live happy.
This play calls into question what role gender in love. You can say that at the end of the play there were two happy heterosexual couples, but the way the script is written, there is some leeway on the interpretation of Orsino and Viola’s relationship. The duke piratically tells Viola that he fancies her better as a man, but it is good that she’s a woman, because they can actually be together (“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”). He even continues to call her by her male name. This play highlights how gender is just something that we have been tagged with at our birth, but it can be “change” (or disguised is more like it).
The play also dives into the idea that love is what causes suffering. Every character in the play was caused suffering by the one they love: Olivia had just lost her brother (her brother was actually dead), Orsino was pining away over Olivia, Viola and Sebastian both believed they had lost each other, Olivia won’t return Orsino’s feeling, Viola can’t show her feelings, Cesario doesn’t return Olivia’s affections, and so on so forth. Because of this many characters in the play express love as some demanding disease, rather than a warm fuzzy feeling we might want to believe.
So what’s the point of all this love and gender? I think it is to make you think. Things that may have seemed so concrete can actually change and shift. Is there really only one way to go about something? Is anything in the world truly constant?
2 responses to “The Shakespearean Love Triangle”