Twelfth Night Research Paper

Twelfth Night : Deceit, Disguise, Desire Love requires us to be able to trust another, be kind to one another, know another, understand another. To be able to love requires us to accept change, to accept that our fate does not rest entirely in our hands, to accept who we are. But in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night love is just a “term” characters agonize about. Twelfth Night explores and reveals the erotic sexual desire beneath the comedic experience of love, often underlining subtexts of unfulfilled homosexual desire and extensive class conflict. Throughout the play, characters that see themselves as the messengers of love and sexual desire are often overpowered by their lust for one another. Viola, the “orphaned” femininity, Olivia, the aristocratic,

When social boundaries are removed, a freedom from labels is explored upon. Shakespeare has elaborated the idea of removing cultural norms by reversing the gender roles of the relationship between Viola and Olivia by suppressing Viola as male role. Through Viola’s male disguise, Cesario, Viola has become Shakespeare’s spirit of love. It was Viola who came to Illyria as by a magical attraction to the disguise and deceit of Orsino’s court. For it was she came who had washed up upon the shores of Illyria at a time when miracles were expected. Miracles that drove out the forces of negativity in the court. At a time where joyous parties drove a woman to so desire and seek out free verse and

As Viola clings to the idea of conquering her love for the duke, she unthinkingly finds solace in the grief stricken Olivia, the love affection of Orsino’s attention. Upon delivering Orsino’s love declaration to Olivia, Viola’s (Cesario’s) and Olivia’s witty conversation becomes an inadvertent confession of love for Orsino. “Make me a willow cabin at your gate / And call upon my soul within the house,(Act I. Scene 5. Lines 256-260).” Language transforms free verse into a deceitful metaphor of eternal love. For Viola, to a certain extent, has become the amorist of the Duchess. The “willow cabin at your gate” has not only the audience believing that the love Viola holds for Orsino is strong but that it seems as if Viola was no longer just a simple messenger but an ardent lover in the flesh. For the Duchess is simply taken aghast by Olivia’s (Cesario’s) poetic declaration of love. Associating her love of Orsino to that of handmade “willow cabin” insinuates her love to be as eternal the weeds that grow from the willow tree. A witty explanation of why she has fallen in love so easily. A love that will hold true no matter on what ends they might be for their love will only continue to grow, bending against the mighty elements of the Earth, never breaking, always yielding to their will, but standing strong and tall for all to see. For this is what Viola