Throughout Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Shakespeare challenges the notion of the heteronormative social standard of 1601, when the play was performed. The comedy is Shakespeare’s only play to have two titles, and is titled in reference to the Elizabethan nativity, or the twelfth night of the Christmas celebration. Circa 1600 during the reign of Elizabeth I, this holiday was celebrated as a festival in which everything was turned upside down, much like the innately chaotic world of Illyria, in which the play takes place. The main character and protagonist, Viola, is continuously met with instances of mistaken identity, romantic frustration, homosexuality, and the overall foolishness that the play is intended to exude. In implicating …show more content…
However, this exhibition of gender ambiguity in Twelfth Night was not the first time the issue of a gender gradient was explored. Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s transvestite comedies, along with his plays As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice. These plays all have in common that they include female protagonists who, each with their own reason, must disguise themselves as young men. Casey Charles notes, in his Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night, that “critics have struggled recently to determine the degree to which such theatrical gender trouble affected the social fabric of Renaissance England”. While Catherine Belsey and Phyliss Rackin argued first that "stage illusion radically subverted the gender division of the Elizabethan world," new historicists like Stephen Greenblatt and Howard have more recently made claims that the Globe operated as a universe in itself, a place where comedy and theatre and breaking rules was acceptable, and had little to no effect on the diminishing power of women in Renaissance England. Shakespeare’s strongly feminist plays may not have coincided with social change for women in sixteenth century England, but the theatre also did not necessarily warrant a conclusion that the Elizabethan plays were socially ineffective on gender roles. “If the relative power of woman was diminished in Renaissance England, the causes of that reduction were as much due to religious and political forces as they were to
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.
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.
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.
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
Second, the transvestism of the English renaissance theatre creates a "space of possibility" for "structuring and confounding culture" as well as enacting a "category crisis" which reflects a potential destabilization of the dominant hierarchy (Garber 16, 17). Greenblatt points out that the enactment of such difference is an instrument to increase audience anxiety before reifying the normative and conventional in the play's res-olution, a pattern played out in The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night; yet this cannot account for the defiant and yet compassionate resolution of Dek-ker's The Roaring Girl, where the mannishly clad Moll blesses the marriage of Sebastian and Mary Fitz-Allard and their reconciliation with their fathers, at the same time refusing the conventional solution for herself.
Society cannot describe or expound upon the significance of the identity of gender of oneself because the question has no finite and/or absolute answer due to the ever-changing variables in common ideology and thinking. The variables just mentioned are in correspondence to the time and amount of influence outside opinions have on oneself and his/her opinion about the matter. The fact remains that the subjective views of one’s personal beliefs equates to nothing in the presence of contravening, biased thinking of the society. People often tend to follow. It is the nature of our species to follow, for general acceptance among peers is the true catalyst of all decisions. In modern society, many new perspectives have been introduced such as gay and lesbian relations, or the belief in one’s gender to be opposite of their physical appearance. “In examining how female eroticism begins to assume discursive shape and currency on the early modern stage, I argue here that Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night offers an overlooked opportunity to witness the dynamics by which a language of female-female desire emerges from the materials of conventional heteroerotic discourses already in circulation,” (Ake 375). The truth lies solely with the person who ponders the question. This is what many literary works attempt to convey, yet few stand prevalent. Shakespeare creates the lucid, romantic comedy Twelfth Night in order to convey the lack of certitude in gender identity of the self, while
through his vanity is easily fooled into thinking it is he who she loves although
The play Twelfth Night encapsulates what it meant to be a man and women throughout
Shakespeare plays provide a broad and fluid platform for post-modern theatre makers to explore upon various subjects. Yet, it is particularly interesting when actors are dancing around with genders and sexualities with Shakespeare text, however ahead of time he was, which was written in a time that women and queer were oppressed or not acknowledged.
William Shakespeare was a man of mystery. Some say that the man behind the famous poems, sonnets, and plays was not William Shakespeare, but another man in disguise. It is certain that Shakespeare found it important to use disguise and deception in his plays. These elements are in Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, and Twelfth Night, just to name a few. In Twelfth Night many characters disguise themselves to, either play a trick on someone or, because they need the disguise to survive.
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.
Gender identity and its roles in 17th and 19th century England were regarded as rigid fact — definite and unyielding. The adherence to these social protocols was of utmost importance. Masculinity was viewed as being dominant, assertive, and bold, whereas femininity involved beauty, obedience, and chastity. The theatre became a method of challenging this rigid social concept. Both William Shakespeare’s As You Like It and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest explore these public values through their characters. Wilde and Shakespeare’s use of gender reversals satirize the traditions of social order, marriage, and gender responsibilities at the time, thereby revealing that gender is not absolute.
In Twelfth Night Shakespeare uses gender roles and cross dressing to create disguise. This creates a sense of gender ambiguity and this is what makes the audience laugh - but although it creates a sense of fun and liveliness it also examines
Equity between men and women is a deeply rooted battle. As the modern culture shifts further from patriarchal rule, it is interesting to question why females remained the submissive sex for so many centuries. When examining the play Twelfth Night, it becomes apparent that Shakespeare considered such an issue and used the character Viola and her interaction with Orsino as a vessel for gender equality.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a play with themes that parallel the folly of the festival it is named after. The main storyline of the plot plays on this a lot by mixing up the stereotypes around gender that were very present at the time. However, a sub-plot involving secondary characters defines this theme even more. It takes the idea even further by relating servants’ attempts to blur the lines between social classes. Twelfth Night’s Maria and Malvolio both have great aspirations to rise above their social class. However, Maria succeeds where Malvolio fails because of her capability to make use of the satiric ambiance of her mistress’s household to achieve her goals.