Gender Misidentity in Twelfth Night

While many will agree that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is critically acclaimed to be one of the most entertaining and well-liked pieces that he has written, there tends to be a discrepancy over how the characters in the play are portrayed when it comes to the importance of gender roles. After reading James C Bulman’s article over the Globe’s more recent performance of Twelfth Night and Shakespeare’s original written version, I realized that there are many ways that this famous piece has been portrayed and each has its own pros and cons.

In medieval and Elizabethan England, homosexuality was not only looked down upon, but was a crime punishable by law. Found perpetrators, including the famous King Edward II, were horribly punished. Edward was killed by “the slow and painful insertion of a red, hot poker into his anus”, along with his lover, who “had his genitals cut off and burned” (Sanders). Such is the world in which a bisexual William Shakespeare lived. Though he married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18, he was rumored to have had extramarital affairs with numerous men while in London (“Shakespeare’s Sexuality”). Gay men are present in many of Shakespeare’s plays, most prominently Twelfth Night. A sailor named Antonio falls in love with a man of noble birth named

All throughout Illyria, there is romance, passion, royalty, and an immense amount of gender stereotypes. William Shakespeare imagines the kingdom of Illyria to have very traditional norms for both women and men in his play Twelfth Night. In Scene 2 of Act 1, Viola, recently rescued from a shipwreck, hears about a duke named Orsino and instantly comes up with a plan to get closer to him. Her plan is to disguise herself as a boy who she will name Cesario and become one of Orsino's’ attendants. Right off the bat, we begin to see gender stereotypes. Why must Viola become a man in order to work for the duke? Elizabethan society “molded women into the form of the dutiful wife and mother” (Elizabethan Women). Viola could not have served duke Orsino as a woman because as a woman she was expected to work at home and be either a “dutiful wife [or a] mother”. Scene two prepares the audience for the idea of gender throughout the rest of the play. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is very traditional play due to its ideas of gender stereotypes in Elizabethan society.

It is said that Queen Elizabeth I’s controversial reign at the time informed the play’s content. She, in fact, used to like to invite theater companies to her palaces[2] and saw a performance of the play at Christmastime while on a campaign in Ireland[3]. In her medieval England, people met the idea of a female monarch with hostility[4], because there had never been one until[5] . The challenge to tradition that was Queen Elizabeth I’s reign most likely to lead the discussion of gender roles in Twelfth Night.

Twelfth Night is a very feminist play once readers have been reading it. The story’s protagonist is a woman, Viola. Viola displays herself as a rational, strong, witting woman, who has to disguise herself as a man to be able to become a faithful attendant of Orsino. With Viola doing this it creates a big sexual mess as Viola falls in love with Orsino but cannot tell him since he still thinks she is a man. While Olivia, who is the object of Orsino’s affection, falls for Cesario, the disguise for Viola. Once Viola’s true identity is revealed Orsino declares his love for Viola which suggest that he may really just loved the masculinity she possessed. Orsino says to Viola, even after seeing her true identity, “Cesario, come; For so you shall be, while you are a man; But when in other habits you are seen, Orsino's mistress and his fancy's queen” (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night 5.1.2599-26001). After everything has been reveled Orsino still calls Viola by her disguise name…her boy name, Cesario. The readers can only wonder is Orsino truly loved Viola for her or if he was in love with the male persona she gave.

People no longer believed everything they were told, but tried to find things out for themselves. As to whether Twelfth Night is a feminist play, would have several differing points to show against or for it. As it was the ‘period of change’, this play could have been written to change people’s ideas of females and males in general. Since the olden days, women have always been viewed

Whether playfully resolved in the comedies or brutally exposed in the tragedies, at some level, all Shakespeare's works symbolically explore the conflict between male and female, or control and emotion, within society and the individual self (Novy 3); however, it is in the tragedies that Shakespeare moves beyond merely reflecting a woman's need to transcend socially imposed limitations to an in depth exploration of the dangers inherent in a worldview that prescribes the extreme devaluation and expulsion of the feminine in order to maintain masculine power and domination (200). In particular, Shakespeare's Macbeth is a play in which the masculine-centred world of the protagonist metaphorically and literally reflects the miserable alienation of both men and women when a fear of the feminine within society and themselves leads to chaotic disorder and the death of the soul.

The play Twelfth Night encapsulates what it meant to be a man and women throughout

Viola’s first words that lay out her gender defying scheme are “Conceal me what I am and be my aid for sure a disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent” (Shakespeare 1.2.53-56). Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare plays with the idea of gender and its role in society. The audience sees Orsino, the duke, trip over his words in his misogynistic contradictions of his opinions on women and their ability to love. Surprisingly, Viola also shares in such contradictions. However she is far from being misogynistic in modern terms. Viola’s outward duality is Shakespeare’s means of contrasting her with Orsino and reinforcing her disguise. (maybe: commenting on the nature of disguises)

In the book “Gender Trouble” (1990), feminist theorist Judith Butler explains “gender is not only a social construct, but also a kind of performance such as a show we put on, a costume or disguise we wear” (Butler). In other words, gender is a performance, an act, and costumes, not the main aspect of essential identity. By understanding this theory of gender as an act, performance, we can see how gender has greatly impacted the outcome of the play in William Shakespeare’s Othello. From a careful analysis of the story, tragedy in Othello is result of violating expected gender roles, gender performance by Desdemona and Othello, and the result of Iago’s inability to tolerate these violations.

In Shakespeare's plays Twelfth Night and As You Like It both of the lead female characters dress as men. Both plays are comedies and the change in gender is used as a joke, but I think it goes much deeper. A woman can become a man, but only if it is not permanent. The affect of the change cannot be too great because she must change back to female once everything is settled. They are strong female characters, but must become men to protect themselves and ultimately solve the problem of the play. In the book Desire and Anxiety: The Circulation of Sexuality in Shakespearian Drama Valerie Traub calls the characters, "the crossed-dressed heroine who elicits and enjoys

Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Twelfth Night arguably poses questions about sexuality and the social constraints of gender. In his 1996 film adaptation of the play Trevor Nunn takes these queries and highlights them for his audience. Nunn’s opening, pictures Viola and Sebastian both dressed in harem costumes as entertainment for the others on board the ship. Panning around the room we see Antonio watching the twins intensely. Antonio shows very little emotion in this scene, nor any recognition of which twin is which.

In 'Twelfth Night’, gender and sexuality in many ways add to the play’s themes of madness. 'Twelfth Night ' is a reflection of renaissance thought and culture, the renaissance was a transitional period from the medieval to the radical Elizabethan era. The culture of the time was a contradictory one, as from one aspect it was influenced by the patriarchal medieval time, where women were under the rule of men and seen as needing the protection of men, however, from another perspective, the culture was a changing one as women were starting to receive education and many humanists believed that women should be given more rights. The play reflects these attitudes and often challenges the social hierarchy and establishes ideas on gender roles, sexuality and cross-dressing. These factors indeed undermine the expectations of male and female behaviour, and in turn further the play 's theme of madness which has a comedic effect on the audience due to the shock humour it provides.

William Shakespeare, in his well-known comedy Twelfth Night, creates a plot that revolves around mistaken identity and deception. Mistaken identity, along with disguises, rules the play and affects the lives of several of the characters. Shakespeare's techniques involve mistaken identity to bring humor, mystery, and complication to the play. Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola who is disguised as a eunuch, Maria who writes a letter to Malvolio as Olivia, and then the mix-up between Sebastian and Viola are revealed.

     Shakespeare's Twelfth Night examines patterns of love and courtship through a twisting of gender roles. In Act 3, scene 1, Olivia displays the confusion created for both characters and audience as she takes on the traditionally male role of wooer in an attempt to win the disguised Viola, or Cesario. Olivia praises Cesario's beauty and then addresses him with the belief that his "scorn" (3.1.134) only reveals his hidden love. However, Olivia's mistaken interpretation of Cesario's manner is only the surface problem presented by her speech. The reality of Cesario's gender, the active role Olivia takes in pursuing him/her, and the duality of word meanings in this passage threaten to turn the