Twelfth Night: Themes (OCR A Level English Literature)

Themes

Having a thorough grasp of the following themes, and crucially, how and why Shakespeare explores these themes will enable you to produce a “conceptualised response” in your exam. Linking carefully to the structure of the plot and what you know about the attitudes of the time period will give you access to the very highest marks on the mark scheme.

• Love and desire

• Excess

• Appearance and reality

• Gender and sexuality

Love and Desire

The play’s plot revolves around the apparent ease with which all the characters fall in love or desire someone else. The romances are complicated by unrequited love and deluded ideas about identity and jealousy. When challenged with obstacles, many of the romances in the play turn out to be merely lustful desire or love for the idea of love itself, rather than true love. Shakespeare mocks the characters’ fickle attitudes to love by amusing audiences with their ridiculous antics. At the same time, Shakespeare conveys the powerful influence of love through an array of tricks and plots which the characters employ to manipulate others’ emotions. Twelfth Night further satirises the main characters' romantic ideas about love through foolish escapades which show their emotions as deluded or insincere. 

Twelfth Night as a comedy

Knowledge and evidence:

• The play is in the form of comedy:

  • In this play, Shakespeare ends the characters’ romantic escapades with marriage 

  • A convention of comedy is that earlier complications in the play are resolved at the end with a marriage

• Typical of a comedy, much of the plot revolves around unrequited love:

  • Orsino’s love for Olivia is unrequited as she is mourning

  • Viola’s love for Orsino has to remain a secret due to her disguise

  • Olivia’s love for Cesario is farcical because Cesario is actually Viola

  • Characters like Orsino and Sir Aguecheek are presented as being in love with the idea of love by choosing those out of their reach

• Twelfth Night mocks the lovers, thus satirising the idea of deluded and fickle desire:

  • Orsino’s unrequited love for Olivia is declared in hyperbolic and sentimental language

  • The ease at which Malvolio is tricked to dance in yellow stockings for Olivia and humiliate himself shows the power of deluded desire

  • Viola is surprised she has unwittingly become the object of Olivia’s affection after making a genuine speech about love

  • However, Shakespeare shows the humorous and catastrophic results of Viola’s deception:

    • She suffers in silence, unable to tell Olivia the speech was intended for Orsino

• Shakespeare spreads the foolishness equally among his characters, thus showing the powerful and pervasive influence of love and desire:

  • Olivia, upon finding out she has married Sebastian, not the person she fell in love with (Viola/Cesario), is happy to continue in the marriage

  • Orsino, having ignored the attentions of Cesario (Viola) until the end, suddenly proposes to Viola once he knows she is a woman

• Twelfth Night follows conventions of Shakespearean comedy as the dialogue makes use of double entendre and puns of a sexual nature:

  • Crass jokes made by Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Sir Toby Belch, and Maria further mock the extreme romantic ideals of the Duke and the Countess

Patriarchal structures in Renaissance England

Knowledge and evidence: 

• The patriarchal system in Renaissance families advocated that women were not equal to men:

  • The Divine Right of Kings placed women on the same social ranking as children

  • In Twelfth Night, Viola, alone in a strange land, disguises herself as a man in order to find work and protect herself

  • Viola’s male clothing is able to trick the duke and Olivia that she is a man:

    • She carries out her duties in court capably, despite being a woman 

• In the Elizabethan era, Viola, a woman, would have been played by a man:

  • However, she dresses as a woman in the play, complicating gender roles further

  • Her femininity is commented on throughout the play:

    • This is explained away as boyish youthfulness

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare challenges societal norms in Renaissance culture which advocated heterosexual relationships

• Shakespeare uses the comical aspect of mistaken identity to show complexities and hypocrisies regarding gender identity and stereotypes

• Shakespeare comments on gender differences by using disguises and deceptions, which create obstacles to romance

Excess

The play highlights aspects of excess by illustrating the way exaggerated grief, vanity and desire can lead to madness. The characters’ hyperbolic and fantastical reactions are mocked throughout the play, and often result in the characters’ punishment. In particular, Shakespeare comments on inflated ego through the fool and Orsino, and mocks the extended, yet insincere, grief of the Countess Olivia. The audience is primed to judge the characters for their excessive behaviour as they laugh at their ridiculous responses. 

Melancholy 

Knowledge and evidence: 

• During the Renaissance, it was believed that changing moods were caused by imbalances in fluids (now known as chemicals) within the body:

  • Therefore, melancholy was viewed as a sickness which arose from imbalanced, inflated self-love or unrequited love

• In Twelfth Night, Orsino is immediately introduced as a melancholic character as he displays typical behaviour of someone who is suffering from emotional pain:

  • He makes metaphorical love declarations to Olivia (who does not love him in return)

  • He displays a preoccupation with music and poetry

• Viola also describes herself as suffering from melancholy after she loses her twin brother, Sebastian, in the storm

• In addition, she feels a “green and yellow melancholy” when she falls in love with Duke Orsino 

• Olivia describes Malvolio as melancholy and blames it on his narcissism

• The play satirises insincere melancholy:

  • Orsino demands music to cure his sickness and then suddenly commands: “Enough! No more!” 

  • He is cured of his love sickness as soon as he learns that Viola is a man

• Shakespeare mocks insincere emotion when Orsino and Olivia fall in love with other characters very quickly

Madness

 Knowledge and evidence: 

• The theme of madness in Twelfth Night is connected closely with the theme of love and desire as characters pine for absent love:

  • Often, characters’ ‘mad’ love sickness is caused through deception, either of themselves or by others

  • Through dramatic irony, Shakespeare mocks their credulity

• Descriptions of madness are portrayed, at first, as a consequence of intense emotion:

  • Viola suffers from a grief-stricken panic when she believes she has lost her brother

  • Orsino comments on the way his unrequited love for Olivia produces something akin to hallucinations

  • Olivia, in love with Cesario (who is Viola in disguise), believes her feelings make her go mad

• Shakespeare, however, shows the way excessive emotion can create madness:

  • He presents fickle characters, confused and suffering over insincere romantic feelings

  • Andrew Aguecheek pines, with little action, for Olivia, whom he claims to adore:

    • His hyperbolic language is intended to make the audience laugh

• A trick played on Malvolio highlights the theme of madness in a more physical way:

  • Olivia’s servant Maria, Sir Toby Belch, and Feste, the fool, decide to humiliate Malvolio as punishment for his arrogance 

  • The tricksters convince Malvolio to perform a silly dance for Olivia 

  • Olivia, watching the strange performance, believes Malvolio to be mad and locks him in the dungeon

• The play is set in a mythical place called Illyria, suggesting the fantastical nature of the play

• The play is set during a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, usually falling on the 6th January:

  • The night symbolised fun and mischief, general anarchy and chaos

  • The revelry and tricks between Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and Maria are in keeping with the night’s tradition of mischief

  • Social roles were relaxed on this night: masters waited on their servants and men and women swapped identities

  • Setting the play at this time contextualises the dressing up and disguises

  • As the play is exaggerated and comedic, this aids suspension of disbelief   

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare comments on the danger of excessive and insincere emotion

• Shakespeare’s plays and poetry often deal with the theme of genuine emotion in contrast to hyperbolic melodrama 

• Shakespeare explores the perception of madness and challenges audiences to consider ideas regarding sanity and insanity

• Shakespeare's use of dramatic irony encourages the audience to laugh at the characters’ ignorance

• Shakespeare highlights ideas relating to excessive desire 

Appearance and reality

Twelfth Night explores the idea that things are not what they seem. Although the audience is aware of who is who and what tricks and deceits are being played out on stage, the characters are none the wiser. The confusion and gullibility acted out in response to the tricks are intended to make the audience laugh at how easily we are able to trick ourselves. Dramatic irony helps highlight the theme of appearance versus reality as characters’ beliefs are manipulated with humorous effect. The play focuses on the role of appearance within identity as characters fall in love based on truths or on deceptive appearances. 

Knowledge and evidence: 

• Viola’s decision to disguise herself as a boy results in a long period of suffering as she finds herself unable to clarify the confusions, or voice her love for Orsino:

  • Viola deceives everyone on stage by disguising herself as a man, Cesario

  • She tells Olivia, “I am not what I am”, yet this is ignored

  • She, too, is deceived as she believes Sebastian (her brother) to be dead while the audience is aware he has been rescued by Antonia, the sea captain

• Maria, Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek trick Malvolio and Olivia:

  • Their fake letter from Olivia to Malvolio causes hilarity as the audience watch the trick play out

• Orsino is confused when Sebastian appears: “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons” :

  • Orsino's insincere love sickness for Olivia is suddenly cured 

  • He immediately proposes to Viola despite having no feelings for her while she was disguised as Cesario

• Olivia's desperate grief at the start of the play is presented as less than real when she falls in love with Cesario immediately

• The resolution of the play exposes all deceptions between the characters:

  • This leads to a happy ending, typical of a comedy

  • The characters find their rightful partner and are married

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare challenges ideas about appearance by showing hypocrisies regarding identity and appearance

• Shakespeare comments on falseness and deception as a cause of suffering 

• Shakespeare explores self-deception, especially in relation to love and desire 

Gender and sexuality

Because Shakespeare centres Twelfth Night around disguise related to appearance, the play challenges audiences to consider the nature of gender and sexuality. Characters are fooled by disguises throughout the play. Shakespeare portrays their confusion through comedy so that their insincerity and credulity are mocked by the audience. This highlights hypocrisies and stereotypes related to gender by showing the concepts of male- and femaleness as fluid. The play’s plot further blurs distinctions within sexuality as characters are unwittingly duped into homosexual love. 

Knowledge and evidence: 

• Shakespeare shows gender as a performed role, based mostly on appearance:

  • Viola immediately disguises herself as a man, Cesario, and is employed as a page to Countess Olivia

  • In this guise she is able to take control of her life, gain work and speak freely

  • Viola explains the ambiguities of gender: “I am all the daughters of my father’s house,/And all the brothers too”

  • She tells Orsino (disguised as a boy) that men’s emotions are “more giddy and unfirm”, more “wavering, sooner lost and worn than women’s are”

  • While Viola is dressed as a man, Olivia falls in love with her for her passionate and wise words

  • The audience see a woman fall in love with a woman, although Olivia believes she is in love with a man

• Shakespeare’s play presents ambiguities within gender constructs {Error #829843: Missing popover `abc123`}:

  • Characters refer to Cesario as an effeminate man

  • Olivia seems to be attracted to Cesario because ‘he’ is such a womanly-looking man

• Twelfth Night makes use of gender-switching within love triangles:

  • In this way, the play presents instability as a consequence of ‘hiding’ your nature

  • Viola’s love for Orsino cannot be fulfilled as she is pretending to be a man

  • However, as soon as she changes back to a woman, Orsino proposes

What is Shakespeare’s intention?

• Shakespeare illustrates how the constructs of heterosexual love can create emotional distress

• Audiences are shown that perceptions of gender are mostly based on appearance

• Shakespeare illustrates, using comedy, the complexities regarding traditional expectations of gender and sexuality