Literature Response: The Twelfth Night Or What You Will

Literature Response “The Twelfth Night”
In the play, The Twelfth Night or, What You Will, written by William Shakespeare, Viola disguises herself as a boy in order to stay safe because girls were expected to have a man by their side, but she thinks her brother is dead. Shakespeare would have a boy play Viola who is also disguised of a boy. A boy should play the role of Viola because she needs to be disguised as a man, needs to look like a man, and Orsino needs someone for the job of wooing Olivia.
Viola needs to be disguised as a man in order to fit in with everyone because women were under men. This allowed Viola to stay and work for Orsino, in order to have a normal life, a life where she would live on a higher level than a regular woman.

Valentine says, “If Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are like to be advanced: he hath known you but three days, and already you are no stranger.”(pg.8). As a man she quickly makes friends with the Duke and is likely to get a higher job. The Duke has his eye on only one woman, no one else, and that woman is Olivia, therefore if Viola stayed as a woman then she would be ignored or given a rather low position of work by the Duke.
Viola needs to look like a man if she wants to be disguised enough where no one would guess that she’s not. If someone found out that she was not a man anything could happen to her and it could ruin her plans. Duke says, “Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and wor, than women’s are.”(pg.26). He states that the way men feel about women is more different than a woman could comprehend. Women according to Orsino are unable to comprehend some things.
Orsino needs someone to go woo Olivia for him, then Viola fearing of being without her brother crossdresses as a man to get a job. Orsino believes that no woman would turn him down, so he keeps telling Olivia that he loves her. Viola says, “I’ll do my best to woo your lady: [Aside] yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.”(pg.9). She wants to marry him but being in disguise makes it clear that the Duke cannot love her. A boy playing the role makes it more realistic that the Duke does not know of Cesario being a girl.
Viola needs to be played by a boy, making Orsino trust her and her ideas of what love really is. The importance Orsino needing to educated by a woman on love connects with having a boy actor play a girl who is disguised as a girl because Orsino can be taught by a woman without knowing she is a woman. The role of Viola had needed to be played by a boy because she has to be hidden as a man well enough that no one will recognize that Cesario is a girl.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William, and Candace Ward. Twelfth Night, Or, What You Will. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1996. Print.