Twelfth Night is one of the most commonly performed Shakespearean

comedies, and was also successful during Shakespeare's lifetime. The first
surviving account of the play's performance comes from a diary entry written
early in 1602, talking about the play and its basic plot. The play is believed
to have been written in 1601, not long after Hamlet was completed. Despite
the play's initial success, it was rarely performed in the late 17th century;
this unpopularity continued until the mid-18th century, when in was revived
and was moderately popular until the 19th century, when the play began to
fare better.
A successful production of the play from the early 19th century added a
great number of songs and funny scenes lifted from other Shakespeare
works; even the betrothal masque from The Tempest, which seems like it
would be entirely out of place in a play like Twelfth Night, was included. The
play was first performed in New York in 1804; and, in 1865, the first known
production of the play with one actress performing the roles
of Sebastianand Viola was staged. Of course, this development required
some alteration of the text; but the experiment was later copied by Jean
Anouilh, who adapted the play for French audiences.
Until the early 20th century, the play was staged in a roundly Victorian style.
Sometimes, elaborate outdoor sets were constructed for the play, with the
advantage of being very pretty, but with the disadvantage of all the action
having to take place in that one setting. The darker, more melancholy
aspects of the play were ignored in favor of broad humor and the comic setpieces within the work; not until the 20th century did productions emphasize
the tragic and bittersweet aspects of the play, and show great progress
regarding insights into the characters' minds.
Although the title of the play is Twelfth Night, it is not certain that this title
means that the play takes place on the "Twelfth Night" itself, or the twelfth
day after Christmas. There are references within the play to Christmas, as Sir
Toby drunkenly attempts something that sounds like the "Twelve Days of
Christmas" song. Thematically, there are links to this period of time, which
was a time of feasting and revelry; the reveling, pranks, and merriment
within the play resemble activities that are characteristic of Twelfth Night,
which was the culmination of the Christmas season, and a time of much
festivity. Some directors of the play have taken the title quite literally, paying
close attention to the Elizabethan rituals related to Twelfth Night; others have
disregarded it entirely, and set the play in the sunny Mediterranean, where
the historical "Illyria" is located.
The journal entry that records a performance of the piece in 1602 also
compares the play to The Comedy of Errors and an Italian play named
Gl'Inganni. Several 16th century Italian plays with this name survive, and all

of them with the same basic plot as Twelfth Night: a woman disguises herself
as a page and woos a woman for her master, whom she loves, but the
woman falls in love with her, and accidentally marries her twin brother. The
story was also included in two English works of prose, one written by
Barnaby Riche in 1581, and the other by Emanuel Forde in 1598.
In one of the Italian versions of the play, the heroine assumes the name
"Cesare" when she is in disguise, which might have been the origin of Viola's
chosen name of Cesario. There is one crucial difference in the plots of the
Italian versions; and that is that the heroine chooses to serve a lover who
had rejected her, so the risk of recognition runs even greater. It is Riche's
treatment of the tale, however, that comes closer than the Italian versions to
what Shakespeare portrays in Twelfth Night, in terms of the specific
situations and reactions of the characters as they interact throughout the
story. However, Riche's version is not as innocent in the way the mix-up of
the twins is dealt with; the Viola character reveals her gender by removing
her clothes in front of theOlivia figure, and the Olivia of his work, rather than
marrying Viola's twin, becomes pregnant by him and becomes involved in
another confusing situation. However, Forde's portrayal of the relationship
between Orsino (called Pollipus) and Viola (Violetta) is closest to
Shakespeare's, in the tenderness and devotion that develops between the
two characters before Violetta drops her disguise and is revealed as a
woman.
It is almost certain that Shakespeare took elements of plot and character
from the Italian Gl'Inganni and from Riche's and Forde's subsequent
reworking of this somewhat-known story; however, Shakespeare was able to
borrow elements of his previously written comedies of mistaken identity,
such as The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Comedy of Errors. In Two
Gentlemen, Julia follows her love Proteus, disguised as his page, and when
he falls in love with another woman, she does the wooing on his behalf. The
woman she woos does not fall in love with her, however, as Olivia does with
Viola. The Comedy of Errors is also a source for Twelfth Night because of the
use of twins and mistaken identity in the plot; though the major difference is
that the twins in Twelfth Night are a boy and a girl and therefore not
completely identical, though their resemblance is used as a device in the
plot. However, The Comedy of Errors is a more lighthearted work, that is
more comedic in nature; Twelfth Night, though it is a comedy, delves more
deeply into the grief of the twins, and into the emotional predicaments
inherent in its plot.
The text of the play first appeared in the First Folio of Shakespeare's work,
published in 1623. Unlike with The Tempest, there are few apparent
discrepancies from what must have been Shakespeare's original text and
what is published; the text does not appear to be a transcript from a
performance, as the Folio text of The Tempest most likely was. There is some

evidence that the text was amended by Shakespeare himself after his first
performance; Viola supposedly had a song in an early version, that was cut
and replaced with her story about an imaginary sister, that has bigger
emotional impact. Also, the discrepancy in Orsino's title, between Count and
Duke, appears to have been amended after a first performance, and Fabian's
sudden substitution for Feste appears to have been done rather crudely,
sometime after 1602, so that Feste could act more like an ironic
commentator than merely a funny accomplice. The text of the play that has
survived, however, appears to be very close to Shakespeare's original vision,
and an accurate reflection of the original text, plus later additions and
revisions.

Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a
literary work.
Love as a Cause of Suffering
Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the plays main
focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the
various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare
shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as
a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively.
Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather,
from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully
as an appetite that he wants to satisfy and cannot (I.i.1 3); at another
point, he calls his desires fell and cruel hounds (I.i.21). Olivia more
bluntly describes love as a plague from which she suffers terribly (I.v.265 ).
These metaphors contain an element of violence, further painting the lovestruck as victims of some random force in the universe. Even the less
melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that My state is desperate for my
masters love (II.ii.35). This desperation has the potential to result in
violenceas in Act V, scene i, when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because
he thinks that -Cesario has forsaken him to become Olivias lover.
Love is also exclusionary: some people achieve romantic happiness, while
others do not. At the end of the play, as the happy lovers rejoice, both

Malvolio and Antonio are prevented from having the objects of their desire.
Malvolio, who has pursued Olivia, must ultimately face the realization that he
is a fool, socially unworthy of his noble mistress. Antonio is in a more difficult
situation, as social norms do not allow for the gratification of his apparently
sexual attraction to Sebastian. Love, thus, cannot conquer all obstacles, and
those whose desires go unfulfilled remain no less in love but feel the sting of
its absence all the more severely.
The Uncertainty of Gender
Gender is one of the most obvious and much-discussed topics in the
play. Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeares so-called transvestite comedies,
in which a female characterin this case, Violadisguises herself as a man.
This situation creates a sexual mess: Viola falls in love with Orsino but cannot
tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsinos
affection, falls for Viola in her guise as Cesario. There is a clear homoerotic
subtext here: Olivia is in love with a woman, even if she thinks he is a man,
and Orsino often remarks on Cesarios beauty, suggesting that he is
attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. This latent
homoeroticism finds an explicit echo in the minor character of Antonio, who
is clearly in love with his male friend, Sebastian. But Antonios desires cannot
be satisfied, while Orsino and Olivia both find tidy heterosexual gratification
once the sexual ambiguities and deceptions are straightened out.
Yet, even at the plays close, Shakespeare leaves things somewhat murky,
especially in the Orsino-Viola relationship. Orsinos declaration of love to
Viola suggests that he enjoys prolonging the pretense of Violas masculinity.
Even after he knows that Viola is a woman, Orsino says to her, Boy, thou
hast said to me a thousand times / Thou never shouldst love woman like to
me (V.i.26 026 1 ). Similarly, in his last lines, Orsino declares, Cesario,
come / For so you shall be while you are a man; / But when in other habits
you are seen, / Orsinos mistress, and his fancys queen (V.i.37 237 5 ).
Even once everything is revealed, Orsino continues to address Viola by her
male name. We can thus only wonder whether Orsino is truly in love with
Viola, or if he is more enamoured of her male persona.
The Folly of Ambition

The problem of social ambition works itself out largely through the character
of Malvolio, the steward, who seems to be a competent servant, if prudish
and dour, but proves to be, in fact, a supreme egotist, with tremendous
ambitions to rise out of his social class. Maria plays on these ambitions when
she forges a letter from Olivia that makes Malvolio believe that Olivia is in
love with him and wishes to marry him. Sir Toby and the others find this
fantasy hysterically funny, of coursenot only because of Malvolios
unattractive personality but also because Malvolio is not of noble blood. In
the class system of Shakespeares time, a noblewoman would generally not
sully her reputation by marrying a man of lower social status.
Yet the atmosphere of the play may render Malvolios aspirations less
unreasonable than they initially seem. The feast of Twelfth Night, from which
the play takes its name, was a time when social hierarchies were turned
upside down. That same spirit is alive in Illyria: indeed, Malvolios antagonist,
Maria, is able to increase her social standing by marrying Sir Toby. But it
seems that Marias success may be due to her willingness to accept and
promote the anarchy that Sir Toby and the others embrace. This Twelfth
Night spirit, then, seems to pass by Malvolio, who doesnt wholeheartedly
embrace the upending of order and decorum but rather wants to blur class
lines for himself alone.

Twelfth Night; or, What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare,

believed to have been written around 160102 as aTwelfth Night's
entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play expanded on
the musical interludes and riotous disorder expected of the occasion, [1] with
plot elements drawn from the short story "Of Apollonius and Silla"
by Barnabe Rich, based on a story by Matteo Bandello. The first recorded
performance was on 2 February 1602, at Candlemas, the formal end
ofChristmastide in the year's calendar. The play was not published until its
inclusion in the 1623 First Folio.

Identity
Most of the characters in Twelfth Night are in a state of identity confusion.
Thematically, Shakespeare sets up the plays to actions to reinforce that
identity will always be fragmentary and incomplete until one is able to love,
regardless of whether one is loved in return.
Mistaken Gender Identity
One level of identity confusion in Twelfth Night is gender identity. Viola
embodies this confusion when she assumes the identity of a boy, Cesario. Of
course, in Shakespeare's time, all female roles were played by boys, so in
this case a boy actor plays a woman character (Viola) who dissembles herself
as a boy (Cesario). In a patriarchal culture, sexual difference is held to be an
immutable law; traditional gender role behavior was based on a natural
biological fact rather than social convention.
The indeterminacy of Viola/Cesario's sexual identity would show that
maleness and femaleness were just aspects of a role, qualities that are
learned, not immutable physical traits. When Cesario and Sir Andrew face
each other in a duel, it is revealed that both are acting the role of being a
man. The biological fact of Sir Andrew's maleness is obsolete. Both
characters are pretending.
Love and the Self
Shakespeare, especially through Olivia, gets to the heart of the relationship
between self and love. When we fall in love, we almost necessarily lose our
self-composure, cease to be able to see our actions with our own eyes. Yet
even though Olivia fears that her attraction to Viola will come to naught, she
is willing to risk it, because love, or at least intense attraction, allows her to
leave her mind behind and give herself up to fate.
The Danger of Love
In Twelfth Night, love is seen as similar to death, because both prose a
threat, or at the very least, a challenge to the singular self that is afraid of
change. To be able to love another requires that one must accept change, to
accept that one cannot entirely control one's fate, or even one's will. The
very language that one uses to communicate with another may end up
demanding more, or at least differently, than what one intended.

The characters in the play that cling to a singular sense of self that does not
allow for change are often the ones for whom change happens most
violently. Malvolio is the most notable example of this, but Orsino, too,
although he claims to be open to love, is, beneath all his high rhetoric,
deeply afraid of any mutual love relationship. In some ways, it's much easier
for him to pine for Olivia and send middlemen to woo her, precisely because
it flatters his ego to feel he loves more than she loves him back.