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Quote Bank
&
Critical Guide
William Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night:
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Contents
Antonio:
...
5
Malvolio:
...
10
Orsino:
...
13
Sebastian:
...
16
Sir Toby:
...
19
QUOTES AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES BY THEMES :
...
22
Madness:
...
25
Disguise and Deception:
...
30
Further readings:
...
1]
‘If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant’ [2
...
If this young gentlemen / Have done offence, I take the fault on
me’ [3
...
4]
‘I snatch’d one half out of the jaws of death’ [3
...
4]
‘Antonio never yet was thief or pirate’ [5
...
1]
‘How have you made a divison of yourself? / An apple, cleft in two, is not much more
twin / Than these two creatures
...
]
homoerotic feelings on the Elizabethan stage, or indeed any stage since then, until the
legalization of male homosexuality
...
’ However, Davies also points out that in Elizabethan England there
was a ‘cult of male friendship and love’ which may find implicit voice in the play through
the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio, and Orsino and Cesario
...
’
She goes on to argue that ‘according to Renaissance theory, friendship occurs between
male equals […] it is superior to male-female relationships because it is a product of moral
choice which finds pleasure in souls, not bodies
...
)

3|Page

C
...
1996
...

Steve Davies 1993:
‘The rawest, most devoted and possessive love in the play belongs to [Antonio], so that an
emotional centre of Twelfth Night is located on its margins
...
’
‘In Twelfth Night the failure of homoerotic fulfilment is located not in the major plot but in
the minor Antonio/Sebastian action’
Nancy Lindheim 2007:
‘Antonio’s silence [for most of Act 5 Scene 1] is not emotionally significant […] He is
included in the group, his role as Sebastian’s friend a strand in the social tapestry that
Twelfth Night weaves
...

Smith also argues that a homoerotic reading is arguably a misreading as such a
classification of sexuality did not exist in the Elizabethan era, as such terms like
homosexual, transgender etc cannot be ascribed to characters
...
Critics such
Stephen Greenblatt argue that we are so immersed with popular culture that we cannot
not read Antonio and Sebastian as a homoerotic relationship
...
1], and an actor may have played Antonio and Sir Toby for
example
...
1]
...
Antonio is plainly Sebastian’s lover
...

2017/8 RSC Luscombe Production: Antonio wears a green carnation in every scene
...
Therefore, this could symbolize Antonio
being ‘in the closet’ during Luscombe’s Victorian setting

Feste:
Useful Quotes:











‘Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage’ [1
...
Take
away the fool gentlemen’ [1
...

‘I wear not motley in my brain’ [1
...
1] — another example of his ‘linguistic terrorism’ i
...
his
wordplay
...
1]
‘Words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them’ [3
...
1]
‘Sir Topas the curate, who comes to visit Malvolio the lunatic’ [4
...

Traditional criticism has viewed Twelfth Night as:


Samuel Peyps 1663

‘a silly play’


William Hazlitt 1817

‘full of sweetness and pleasantry’
Modern criticism has viewed Twelfth Night as:


Rex Gibson 2002
Modern criticism ‘produces readings that are subversive of existing social
structures’ and ‘identifies how the play expresses the interests of dominant groups,
particularly rich and powerful males’

Traditional criticism has viewed Feste as:



Samuel Coleridge 18th/19th century
Shakespeare’s fools are ‘unfeeling spectators of the most passionate situations’
A
...
Bradley 1904
‘A wise, happy, melodious fool’
Feste is ‘wholeheartedly devoted to his profession’ and ‘unable to make personal
relationships’
‘We never laugh at Feste…
...
being lord of himself, he
cares little for Fortune […] “sunshine” is always with him and spreads it radiance
over the whole scene in which he moves
...
’



John Russell 1966
In stage adaptations ‘Feste, the fool, can be melancholy, or bitter, or professional or
amorous, or self-contained and philosophical, or bawdy’

6|Page



Peter Thomson 1975
‘He is a working man among the leisured classes, deeply critical of their behaviour
and bitterly dissatisfied with his own’



Elliot Kriegar 1979 (Marxist reading)
‘A ruling-class ideology operates within the play’



Rex Gibson 2002 (Marxist reading)
‘Feste has been seen as excessively concerned about losing his employment
...
In every aspect of light he sees darkness, in every character of worth he
sees flaw
...




RSC 1983: John Caird, set in the Jacobean period with Illyria rife with decay and
Shakespeare’s sonnets on unrequited and barren love
...




1988 Trevor Nunn: Feste is an omniscient narrator or observer, he know who
Cesario is as he sees Viola arrive to Illyria
...




RSC 1998: Adrian Noble, overplayed the comic aspects of the play in so much that
the melancholy was lost — Twelfth Night exists in an equilibrium between the two,
omitting one part ruins the whole thing
...




2012 Tim Carroll: All male cast, attempting to recreate the original production, Feste
acts as the audiences cue for laughter and fulfils the role of the courtly fool to its
highest extent
...
The prison in scene in act 4 scene 2
becomes quite disturbing for the audience to witness the bullying of Malvolio
...
3] — Representation of his puritan nature
‘She uses me with more exalted respect than anyone else that follows her’ [2
...

‘I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings and cross-gartered’ [2
...
5] — Class struggle and awareness
‘Nothing that can be come between me and the full prospect of my hopes’ [3
...

‘I have limed her’ [3
...

‘And tell me, in the modesty of honour / Why you have given me such clear lights of
favour’ [5
...
1] — Not everyone ends up happy and
in bliss at the end
...
Continues the motif of hunting
...
Like [his mistress
and her suitor], Malvolio aspires towards an illusionary love, but his mistake is
grosser than theirs, his posturing, more extravagant and grotesque
...
’
‘Malvolio is no longer seen as a figure of fun who fully deserves his cruel
humiliation, but as a character who invites a complicated, ambiguous audience
response
...
Do we laugh at it?’

Harold Bloom (late 20th/early 21st century)


‘The gulling of Malvolio passes into the realm of sadism’

Productions over time:


1640 Leonard Diggs: Praised Malvolio in his poem with the lines ‘The cockpit
Galleries, Bones, are all full / To hear Malvolio that cross gart’d Gull’
...
This was a theatrical
turning point that was not well-received at the time
...

9|Page



RSC 1969 John Barton: Chekovian influenced production, therefore Malvolio’s
mental state is more exposed here
...




RSC 1994: Ian Judge: Comedy to the hilt, therefore making Malvolio very much the
comic character described by Samuel Johnson
...




2012 Tim Carroll Globe Production: Stephen Fry is portrays the pompous fool of
Malvolio whilst equally carrying the blade of the tormented abused figure
...
One New Historicist reading of this casting
by Carroll is that, Stephen Fry a comedian who suffers from Bipolar disorder (see,
Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive), is a casting that we, as the
audience, cannot not see this historical context when viewing the mental tormenting
scenes
...




2017 Simon Godwin National Theatre Live: Tamsin Greig portrays the role of
Malvolia, a puritan to the max
...
3]
‘Peace, you rogue, no more o’ that’ [1
...
3]
‘For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him’ [2
...
3]
‘‘Ass’ I doubt not’ [2
...
4]

Critical Viewpoints:





Nancy Lindheim — ‘The designation of both Maria and Malvolio as ‘gentle’ several
times in the course of Twelfth Night may indicate – along with its interest in Puritan
Controversy [see Philip Stubbs] – that the play harks back to the early 1580s’
...

Maria is linguistically dexterous
Productions over time are not necessarily that important for this character as she
remains fairly consistent throughout the productions
...
1] — Lust and
desire, motif of hunting
‘If music be the food of love play on’ [1
...
In
love with love
...
1] — Again hyperbolic language
‘I have unclasped / To thee the book even of my secret soul’ [1
...
4] — Changeable nature of his love, proleptic for
ending and also his stubborn nature
...
1] —
macabre imagery, incel language analogy to parable of Abraham
...
1] — Climax of the play, identity
gender androgyny etc
...
Orsino new identity crystallises when he marries Viola
...
L
...

New historicism criticism, Robert Kimbrough argues that sexuality was less of a
concern to the general audience as there was an all-male cast (puritan critics like
Philip Stubbs were a rarity)
...
See Christopher Luscombe’s production with the Wildean
Orsino
...
Olivia and Cesario is an impossible coupling as well
...

Herschel Baker ‘Duke Orsino is a narcissistic fool’
Hudson Shakespeare Company ‘though he is a humorous figure, a parody of
melancholy lovers
...

Sharon Hamilton ‘Orsino’s fantasies are entirely self-centred’
...

David Jones ‘Orsino imagines he is in love with Olivia although he doesn’t know her
at all
...
This is the first non-realist interpretation
creating an almost dream-like quality, therefore, a Freudian An Interpretation of
Dreams (1899) may be possible
...

1983 — John Caird Very Dark and psychoanalytic in its depiction
...

1997 — Adrian Noble criticised for focusing too much on the happy parts of the
place
2005 —Michael Boyd Evoked Samuel Beckett and Waiting For Godot
...

2017 Christopher Luscombe production has Orsino as a heighted decadent
Wildean figure who paints and hangs around with naked statues
...
In its
absence it is greater
...
He is absent minded of the mental
illness motif of the production with his ignorance of Malvolio at the end —
represents contemporary ideas of mental health stigmatization
...
1] Orsino on Olivia
‘Let him send no more —/ Unless perchance you come to me again’ [1
...
5] — Very different to audiences expectations
‘O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio’
‘I have said too much unto a heart of stone / And laid mine honour too unchary on’t’
[3
...
1]
...

‘Would thou’dst be ruled by me!’[4
...
3] —Need to be in command
...

‘Fear not, Cesario
...
1]

Olivia Critical Viewpoints:









H
...
Charlton (1949) — ‘ Olivia displays ‘unrestrained emotionalism’
...
L
...
’
William Winter(1636-1917) ‘ Olivia — self absorbed [
...
] serves but to
throw the immeasurable superiority of Viola into stronger relief’
Frances Dolan ‘She [Olivia] asserts domestic and economic authority’
Shakespeare’s Romances (1957) Northrop Fyre, Olivia is in search of selfknowledge,
Olivia takes up her own version of ‘love-sickness’, pining after a man who is really a
woman as a consequence she loses her sense of her identity to achieve self13 | P a g e











knowledge
...

Jan Kott c
...
1980s Howard is critical of how the play presents both Viola and
Olivia, seeing both women as ending up subject to male dominance in the hierarchy
of marriage
...

[Viola’s] success before the aristocratic Orsino and Olivia consequently points to the
constructedness and perfomative character of gender itself’
Amy Smith 2009 ‘When she stage manages her own marriage choices Olivia
remodels the economic exchange of maidenhood’ Smith’s reading would work very
nicely if one were to use Luce Irigaray’s essay ‘Women on the Market’ from The sex
which is not one
...

Sexual confusion was generated with there being lots of physical contact e
...
Olivia
touching Malvolio
2004 Glove Production: Olivia is seen as the ‘love crazed maniac’ growing
obsessed over Cesario
...
Thus, emphasising her ‘masculine’ features
...
Orsino is also dressed
entirely in black with an all female court, when men approach she puts on shades
...
Even more so, in the light with that of
Hollywood and in particular the now convicted sexual abuser Harvey Weinstein
...
1]
‘My bosom is full of kindness’ [2
...
3]
‘If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!’ [4
...
1]
‘aside What relish is in this? How runs the stream? Or am I mad, or else this isa
dream; Let fancy still my sense in the Lethe sleep — If it be thus to dream , still let
me sleep’ [4
...
3]
‘Antonio, O my dear Antonio! How have the hours racked and tortured me’ [5
...
1992) ‘Sebastian could never have done what was necessary
to win Olivia, and his only chance was for his sister to perform this masculine role
for him’
Stephen Travis Crowder ‘Sebastian’s function is that he acts as a male substitute
for his sister’
Jan Kott (c
...
Dressed as
women, speaking female parts, yet concealing youthful maleness is altogether
damnable and leads audiences astray: “they play the sodomites” ’
Steve Davies argues that ‘it would not have been possible to present explicitly […
...
Sodomy […] became a criminal act under
Henry VIII punishable by burning
...


15 | P a g e











20th Century Criticism:
Harold Goddard (1951) ‘Pretty nearly everybody in it but Viola and Sebastian
...

Joseph Summers (1955) ‘The confrontation of Sebastian and Cesario/Viola
provides the means for discarding of all the lovers’ masks’
Modern Criticism:
John Casey (c
...

Stephen Orgel ‘The only overtly homosexual couple in Shakespeare [are Antonio
and Sebastian], except for Achilles and Patroclus’ c
...
New Historicist critic
...
1990’s) ‘Love and desire pass from a youth to a girl, and a girl to a
youth
...

1974 RSC Peter Gill: Very bisexual production he staged it as an ‘exploration of rampant
bisexuality’ (Gill)
...
This production is significant in the
history of the treatment of LGBTQIA+ in popular culture during the 20th Century
2001 Posner Production: Antonio and Sebastian wake up in an unmade bed together —
possible homoerotic readings etc
...


Sir Andrew:
Useful Quotes:



‘He’s a great quarreller’ [1
...
3]
16 | P a g e










‘I am great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit’ [1
...
3]
‘Is that the meaning of ‘accost’? [
...
] What’s your jest? [
...
3]
‘aside I knew ‘twas I, for many do call me fool’ [2
...
2]
‘I’ll not meddle with him That’s it! I won’t mess with him’ [3
...
1]
‘I was adored once’ [5
...
L
...
But he also marks one limit
as to what revelry can do for a man’
 Kiernan Ryan Murray Edwards College Cambridge ‘The raucous conduct of the
tipsy triumvirate violates the fundamental principles on which the decorum of
everyday social life depends: the Manor House of a lady is transformed into an
alehouse; her uncle and Sir Andrew, both knights of the realm, stand hierarchy on
its head by acting like common tinkers and cobblers; the still of the night becomes
the tie for uproar instead of peaceful sleep; and rational, responsible behaviour
gives way to bedlam’
 Emma Smith 2011 Hertford College Oxford ‘ To be funny is to push boundaries of
taste and acceptability
...
There is a second about Malvolio-doubtless tremendously comical in an
era when bearbait- ing was accounted genteel sport, but cruel in our own
...
The
problem is to make the first of these plays bearable (almost impossible), the second
human, the third delightful’

Productions:
2017 RSC Christopher Luscombe: Sir Andrew is bullied throughout the play by the brutish Sir
Toby, who steals literally from his pockets
...
1] is played whilst the
actor is in his pajama’s emphasizing the comedic aspect, but also the vulnerable nature of the
character
...
3] — his callousness is first exposed here
...
3]
‘[Y]ou mistake, knight: ‘accost’ is to front her, board her, woo her, assail her’ [1
...

‘[T]o anger him we’ll have the bear again’ [2
...
2] —Violent language
‘Will you help? An ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave; a thin-faced knave, a gull!’
[5
...


Critical perspectives:













William Hazlitt: The Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays 1817
‘We have a friendship for Sir Toby’
‘[The play] makes us laugh at the follies of mankind, not despise them, an still less
bear an ill-will towards them’
Nancy Lindheim: Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night 2007
‘The trajectory of Sir Toby’s behaviour in the play follows an almost consistently
darkening path’
‘Sir Toby, in greater measure than Feste, has been the bringer of carnival fun
...
’
Harold Bloom 1998
Sir Toby is a ‘fifth-rate rascal’
Rex Gibson 2002
‘Sir Toby’s foolishness has sometimes been interpreted as representative of his
class’
Michael Bristol: ‘The Festive Agon: The Politics of Carnival’ 1985
‘Carnival misrule in the persons of Toby and his companions…contends with Lent in
the person of Malvolio
...
H
...
’
‘[The characters] are neither wise and intelligent, nor full of self-knowledge, nor
capable of real love
...

2017 Simon Godwin National Theatre Live: Toby is presented as the callous indifferent
drunk and while not necessarily ‘comedic’ he is still remains likable
...
We, the
audience, are encouraged to generate as much pathos towards Andrew as he is an old man
being exploited
...
2]
appearance v reality
‘Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife’ [1
...
5]
‘Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness’ [2
...

‘O time, thou must untangle this, not I’ [2
...
4]
‘Oh, if it prove / Tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love’ [3
...
1500’s —His comments on theatre and the androgyny of actors
...
1750’s Conservative criticism ‘[Viola] by no passion expose[s]
herself to all the dangerous consequences of so unworthy and shameful situation’

Mid-20th Century Criticism:




Charlton – ‘Viola displays an equilibrium of feeling, wit and intelligence
...
L
...
’
19 | P a g e










Modern Criticism:
Sheila Bannock 1969 – ‘Viola acts as a catalyst, a storm of honest emotion
...
’
Lisa Jardine 1994- ‘… (On stage) boys dressed as girls dressed as boys, all
apparently add to the delicious pleasure of the erotic chase
...
’
Rex Gibson 2002 – ‘Viola’s cross- dressing enhanced erotic effect on Elizabethan
audiences’

Critical theories applied to Viola:
Queer Theory:


In this section there are a number of mini-argument that need developing but
hopefully provide the starts for critical queer analysis
...

Judith Butler (arguably the most famous and important queer theorist and also philosopher
of the 21st century), famously declared ‘there is no gender identity behind the expressions
of gender
...
In relation to Twelfth Night Cesario dresses as a man, therefore for all
intensive purposes is a man in the eyes of the other characters
...

This reading of the play is incredibly important when applied to the concept of disguise and
costume, in which when Cesario/Viola changes costume for the social audience she is
therefore traversing the genders
...
As Butler argues, in the quote above, gender has no concept
without a performance and the audience watching the play act as a representation of a
20 | P a g e

social audience
...
Productions which have the same
actor portraying both Sebastian and Cesario will be an interesting analysis
...
It is also important to
note that Butler is not insinuating gender identity is a performance, instead that gender can
be perfomative
...

 1808–1900 Productions: Viola’s entrance occurred before Orsino’s opening
monologue
...
If the duke
follows her on stage, viola seems more firmly in charge of her fate
...
He hated that Viola came to be played
by a woman, because it means relations between Orsino and Viola are heterosexual,
but her relations with Olivia have homoerotic potential
...

 1969 RSC John Barton: Orsino’s longing for love is overlaid by the storm of Viola’s
arrival, she awakens him from romantic delusion
...
Reality is at odds with Romanticism
...
4]; and again
when she reunites with Sebastian
...

 1983 RSC John Caird: Mortality dwells upon her fears, she views her brother’s
return as a ghostly haunting
...

 1996 Trevor Nunn: Feste sees who Cesario really is, he is an omniscient narrator
...
4], there is a hyper masculine scene between Orsino and Cesario in which they
play poker
...
Feste’s song become a Bollywood number which causes a fission of sexual
ambiguity when he tries to drag Viola/Cesario into the dance
...

 2017 RSC Christopher Luscombe: Luscombe sets Twelfth Night in a wildean
setting
...
This choice is interesting as Feste in this role is analogous to Queen
Victoria’s Indian attendant Abdul Karim
...


QUOTES AND CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES BY THEMES:
Desire and love/lust:
Useful quotes






‘If music be the food of love, play on / Give me excess of it: that surfeiting / That
appetite may sicken and die’ [1
...
2}
‘What is love? ‘Tis no hereafter: / Present mirth hath present laughter: What’s to
come is still unsure: / In delay there lies no plenty’ [2
...
3]
‘His life I gave him, and did thereto add my love without retention, or restraint, all
his dedication’ [5
...


Early Critics:




Jan Kott “The desire of Orsino for his page, of Olivia for a woman, and of Antonio
for his young master, is not ‘confined’ in marriage resolutions” — Homosexual
desire
Pamela Bickley argues that 16th century Puritan writers ‘attacked the immoralities
of theatre-going’ and ‘thundered against stage transvestism […] early critics see the
boy actors as titillating homosexual desires in the (male) audience
...
]
homoerotic feelings on the Elizabethan stage, or indeed any stage since then, until
the legalization of male homosexuality
...
’ However, Davies also points out that in
Elizabethan England there was a ‘cult of male friendship and love’ which may find
implicit voice in the play through the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio,
and Orsino and Cesario
...
As critics often note, however, lesbianism was barely
conceivable as a practice in the period’



Nancy Lindheim also argues that ‘much of Antonio’s language demonstrates the
early modern overlap in vocabulary for all strong positive feelings, the extent to
which a single language was applied unselfconsciously in discourses of erotic love,
friendship and religion alike
...
’

Mid-20th Century Criticism
C
...
Male friendship
is too weak a term for this absolute bonding between young men’
Antonio’s silence at the end of the play ‘is a mark of absence from the consciousness
of the text […] darker readings have tended to interpret [his] silence as a sign of
exclusion and alienation, providing a shadow which sets into relief and brings into
possible question the glossy “goldenness” of the harmonious romantic conclusion
...
Both transgress patriarchal convention which forbade
homosexuality and woman taking the lead’




Nancy Lindheim 2007
Olivia’s attraction to Cesario seems to be based upon firstly ‘a kind of androgynous
youthfulness that might be attractive by comparison with a masculine “bear-like”
Orsino [and secondly] a striking verbal exuberance’
‘Antonio’s silence [for most of Act 5 Scene 1] is not emotionally significant […] He is
included in the group, his role as Sebastian’s friend a strand in the social tapestry
that Twelfth Night weaves
...
] traditional
Christmas revels […] in which the accepted social order of everyday life was ritually
[but temporarily] inverted
...
3] Malvolio
‘Sir Topaz, never was a man thus wronged
...
They have laid me here in hideous darkness’ [4
...
4]
‘Why this very midsummer madness’ [3
...
4] —Aloof language by Malvolio towards the plotters
...
D
...
See
schizoanalysis or scizoanalytic reading
...




Along with these psychoanalytic readings, Freudian and Lacanian
theories may be placed to best analyse the nature of madness within the
play and how it reflects the mixed mood metatheme (the mixed mood is
the central theme) of the play
...
4] that looks
towards childhood desires as the origin of adult fantasies
...
To extend Cahill’s argument, we can make the connection
to Marxism and the ‘seizing the means of production’ whereby, Malovlio,
who is of no discernible noble blood, attempts to cross the class strata
...
4]
...
Therefore this
‘wish-fulfilment’ (Freud), is semblative of his object-orientated desire
(being), in which Malvolio dreams of Olivia being his heterosexual object,
and him Count Malvolio, his id-driven alter-ego
...
Quite
expressionistic in its externalisation, see the stairs as a staging device not only
for class but also Malvolio’s mental state
...


Function of Comedy over time:
‘Humor [comedy] is tragedy plus time’ — Mark Twain:

25 | P a g e

Mark Twain’s platitude, above, eloquently places the nature of comedy in regard to the
human condition
...
e
...
This shows an oscillation
between tragedy and comedy, one that Shakespeare best employs with his ‘darkest
comedy’
...
’ — Sir Andrew [1
...
However productions such as the RSC 2017 subvert this
expectation with his attitude on stage towards Andrew
...
3]
‘A dry jest’ — Maria [1
...
Typical Shakespearean innuendo
...
3]
...

‘All is simulative a woman’s part’ — Orsino [1
...

‘whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife’ — Viola/Cesario [1
...

‘Lechery! I defy lechery’ — Sir Toby [1
...
Toby mishearing of lethargy for lechery due to
his inebriated state creates a lower form of comedy similar to the ‘Belch’
...
5]
‘[W]hen thou spok’st of Pigrogromitus, of the Vapians passing the equinoctial of Quebus,
‘twas very good’ — Feste [2
...
Feste’s linguistic terrorism in display with his verbal assault
upon Sir Andrew
...

‘[I]n yellow stockings, and cross-gartered’ — Malvolio [2
...
4]

26 | P a g e

‘To bed! Ay, sweet-heart, and I’ll come to thee’ — Malvolio [3
...
This is a misinterpretation
of Olivia’s suggestion towards Malvolio ‘go to bed’
...

‘I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you’ — Malvolio [5
...
The comedy has stopped and
the audience stand accused of laughing at Malvolio, causing his arguable hamartia
...
’
Nietzsche ‘[T]here can be no carnival without cruelty’ c
...

1938 H
...
Charlton argues that the play elucidates ‘the moral art of securing
happiness by translating the stubbornness of fortune into a quiet and sweet
existence’
1938 H B Charlton argues that the play ‘possesses a dramatic unity in which its
poise and balance reflects and embodies a coherent set of values’
...
Neville Coghill argues that the play offers a ‘firm assertion of
basic harmony’
...
L
...
’
1959 C
...
Barber argues that ‘a temporary, playful reversal of sexual roles can renew
the meaning of normal relations’ and that ‘the most fundamental distinction the play
brings home to us is the difference between men and women
...
L
...


Mid to Late 20th Century
Comedy has a radical social function: it subverts social order and focuses on
disunity and fragmentation
27 | P a g e

1985 Geoffrey Hartman who focuses on the ‘instabilities of language’, argues
‘against attempts to find unity in Shakespeare’s plays
...
’
Late 20th century
...
’
2002 Rex Gibson ‘modern criticism identifies contradiction, fragmentation and
disunity in the play’ and produces readings of the play that are ‘subversive of
existing social structures’
...
] but of a much more complex, painful drama’
...
We laugh at Mark Rylance coming in to rescue Cesario (Sebastian)
with a giant axe
...
1]
...


Disguise and Deception:
Useful Quotes:


‘Thy small pipe / Is as the maiden’s organ shrill and sound, / And all is semblative a
woman’s part’
...
4] Orsino — dramatic irony
...
5] Viola to Olivia, it is not only a female Viola performing a
male Cesario; but a young male actor performing Viola, performing Viola in
Shakespearean times
...




Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness, / Wherein the pregnant enemy does much’
[2
...
Here, Viola becomes aware of Olivia’s newfound affection for
Cesario and laments the unintended consequences of her disguise
...
4] Viola
...
2], Feste is asked by Sir Toby to dress as Sir
Topaz (like Orsino’s ‘opal’ [2
...




‘
...
1]
...
1] Antonio

Critical Viewpoints:
















C
...
Barber 1951 – ‘Viola successfully achieves her disguise through perfect
courtesy
...
There is an element of dramatic irony here: the
audience knows what is going on and who the characters are, but the characters
don’t
...
1980s ‘For both Orsino and Olivia, self-deception serves as an
avoidance of the real world and real emotion’
Kiernan Ryan ‘Viola’s performance as Cesario in this sense is a metaphor for what
all the characters in Twelfth Night are up to
...

Karen Grief 1981 ‘Appearances constanly fluctuate between what is real and what
is illusionary’
Karen Grief 1981 ‘identity and disguise motivate much of the action in Twelfth
Night’
Karen Grief 1981 ‘Illyria is a world of descriptive surfaces’
Stephen Greenblatt 1986 ‘Viola’s disguise has not only created sexual confusion,
but Elizabethan conservatism is being challenged as well’ (New Historicist critic)
Norton ‘Feste sees through Viola’s disguise from the start’
Ian Judge 1994 – ‘a disguise allows her to create new life…hope and joy can be seen
to spring from happiness
...
passing
themselves off as whoever they are supposed to be by playing parts that don’t
coincide with them’
...
But,
whereas he shrewdly guesses the true condition of his lady’s affection, he is blind to
the similar makeup of his own passion
...
/ Thy small pipe is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and
sound, / and all is semblative a woman’s part’ [1
...

‘Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy — as a squash is before
‘tis a peascod, or a cooling when ‘tis almost an apple
...
5]
‘But Come what may, I do adore thee so / That danger shall seem sport, and I will go’
[2
...

‘Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, / More longing, wavering, sooner lost and
worn, / Than women’s are’ [2
...

‘My desire, more sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth
...
3] Antonio
‘Go, Sir Andrew
...
So soon
as ever thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw’st, swear horrible; for it comes to
pass oft that a terrible oath with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives
manhood more approbation than ever proof itself’ [3
...
1]

Critical Viewpoints:
Stephen Orgel ‘the only overtly homosexual couple in Shakespeare [are Antonio and
Sebastian], except for Achilles and Patroclus’ c
...
New Historicist critic
...
]
homoerotic feelings on the Elizabethan stage, or indeed any stage since then, until the
legalization of male homosexuality
...
’ However, Davies also points out that in Elizabethan England there
was a ‘cult of male friendship and love’ which may find implicit voice in the play through
the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio, and Orsino and Cesario
...
Male friendship is too weak a
term for this absolute bonding between young men’
Antonio’s silence at the end of the play ‘is a mark of absence from the consciousness of the
text […] darker readings have tended to interpret [his] silence as a sign of exclusion and
alienation, providing a shadow which sets into relief and brings into possible question the
glossy “goldenness” of the harmonious romantic conclusion
...

Jacob Lund 2012:
‘The language of Antonio in relation to Sebastian’ is ‘openly homoerotic’
‘At the end of the play Antonio remains on stage to see the union of Sebastian and Olivia, a
woman the twin barely knows suggesting perhaps a specific rejection of male-male
relationships here’
New historicism criticism, Robert Kimbrough argues that sexuality was less of a
concern to the general audience as there was an all-male cast (puritan critics like Philip
Stubbs were a rarity)
...
See
Christopher Luscombe’s production with the Wildean Orsino
...
Dressed as women,
speaking female parts, yet concealing youthful maleness is altogether damnable and leads
audiences astray: “they play the sodomites” ’
John Casey (c
...

Jan Kott (c
...

Cesario is Viola, Viola is Sebastian’
Austin Brown ‘It is not Sebastian’s masculinity to which Antonio is attracted, but rather his
physical and social manifestation of femininity’
Sean McEvoy (2018) ‘That part of [Olivia’s] love which is composed of her sexual desire
for him is not necessarily compromised by Sebastian having a different gender to Viola’

Further readings:
Scan the QR code with your phone for links to the articles
...
bl
...
academia
...
lib
...
edu/sr_papers/literature_sr/srliterature_2006/crowder_stephen_travis
...
prestwickhouse
...
pdf

Rethinking Sexuality and Class in Twelfth Night:
http://home
...
edu/~jorgea/untitled%20folder/Rethinking
...
academia

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