William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night – The Meaning in a Nutshell

Dr Mark’s The Meaning in a Nutshell

William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (c. 1601 ̶ 1602)

William Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, or What You Will (c. 1601 ̶ 1602) is a light-hearted comedy intended to celebrate the festival of the Twelfth Night of Christmas, which involves the fun of role reversals and disguises, notably masters dressing as servants and servants dressing as masters. This play pushes the use of disguises and mistaken identities, which were stock-in-trade in comedies, to the nth degree, featuring both class inversions and disguises to swap genders. This leads to a comical love triangle and other curious love entanglements.

The play promotes embracing festivity over puritanical attitudes. To this end, a puritanical wet blanket becomes the victim of a practical joke by some of the most festive characters who compose a fake love letter to convince this cold, censorious man that the woman he secretly loves, loves him in return when she does not. He is being punished for his negative attitudes and behaviour. He represents the kind of person who found festivity and revelry distasteful and saw the theatre (which Shakespeare valued) as sinful. The play celebrates holiday festivity, fun, and the temporary breaking with conventions and restraints as befits the festival of the Twelfth Night. In this context, at the close of the play, the playwright slipped in a compatible message of appreciation for the theatre and theatre people as doing their best to make others happy: ‘And we’ll strive to please you every day’.

The steadily mounting complexity and confusion intrinsic to the plot of a comedy are, in this play, pushed by Shakespeare to their limits. Only very late in the narrative are the complex and perplexing story lines finally unravelled so the lovers who should be together are together to find happiness by the end of the play:

The melancholy Duke Orsino who, at the outset of the play, desired Countess Olivia, although she did not love him in return, finally marries Viola, who does love him, and thereby finds happiness.
The shipwrecked but resourceful Viola (who disguised herself as a young man, Cesario, to obtain employment with Duke Orsino) finds herself desired by Countess Olivia. However, Viola had fallen in love with Duke Orsino (her employer) and eventually marries him.
The shipwrecked Sebastian (Viola’s temporarily lost fraternal male twin) meets then marries Countess Olivia. Of course, Countess Olivia could not have Viola (since she was really a woman dressed as a man) but she could have the equally attractive man who resembles Viola.
The drunken merrymaker, Sir Toby, a cousin of Countess Olivia staying in her home, marries Maria, the lady in waiting to Countess Olivia, whom he admired for her capacity for mischief and practical jokes.

However, one character, Malvolio, did not find happiness, and this is deliberate. Malvolio, the steward of Countess Olivia, was a puritanical wet blanket and the villain of the play. He secretly desired Countess Olivia, the noblewoman for whom he worked, wanting to marry her to increase his rank so he could more effectively tell others how to behave. But this ambitious social climber was embarrassingly put in his place by the fun-loving merrymakers and practical jokers who took revenge on him for his negative attitudes and behaviours during their festivities. They conspired to convince him that Countess Olivia secretly loved him in return when she did not, tricking him into wearing silly clothes and uncharacteristically smiling a lot to impress Countess Olivia when it only confused her (thinking he has gone mad) and brought hilarity to his antagonists.

The play promotes fun and frivolity in the festive season. It is one of Shakespeare’s most light-hearted comedies. This is especially the case in the way the play has fun with what the original theatre audience would appreciate as the outrageous comedy of a woman falling in love with a man who was actually a woman in disguise. However, in the 1990s and early twenty-first century, a postmodern interpretation of the play emerged that sees its inclusion of disguises as promoting gender fluidity and same-sex attraction, pushing the boundaries of public taste by using comedy to suggest that people can love others who are not from the opposite sex and that individuals can choose their gender and swap back and forth between genders. This interpretation reflects notions of gay rights, transgender rights and especially ideas drawn from queer theory such as gender fluidity.

Student resources by Dr Mark Lopez

The purpose of the concise notes of Dr Mark’s The Meaning in a Nutshell is to provide much needed help to students seeking to unlock the meaning of the texts with which they have to deal. (More elaborate notes are provided in lessons as part of my private tutoring business.)

Subject: Twelfth Night meaning, Twelfth Night themes, Twelfth Night analysis, Twelfth Night notes