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Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night, or What You Will, was written around 1601-1602 as entertainment for a feast in celebration of Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the Christmas season on January 5. Traditional celebrations of Twelfth Night were marked by a reversal of normal social positions, as the monarchs and nobility became peasants for a day and vice versa. Shakespeare's play takes up these things and represents a fantasy world, the kingdom of Illyria, where the world has been turned upside down.
The play's depiction of a world where normal classifications of gender, class, and even sexual attraction have been inverted has made it one of Shakespeare's most popular and frequently performed plays, as it is spoken to successive generations that have grappled with these issues. Today, it is often seen as one of the most modern of Shakespeare's plays and has inspired various reimaginings that highlight its relevance to contemporary life.
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Like many of Shakespeare's comedies, especially those written in the later half of his career, Twelfth Night has a dense, complicated plot full of memorable characters. The play opens with Viola, who has survived a shipwreck and been separated from her twin brother Sebastian, whom she presumes is dead. Viola washes up on the shore of Illyria and falls for the kingdom's melancholy, lovelorn ruler, Duke Orsino.
Viola disguises herself as the male servant Cesario to get close to the Duke, and is soon put into service sending letters to the object of Orsino's affection, Olivia, who has closed herself off in mourning for her recently deceased father and brother. Olivia, however, quickly falls in love with Cesario, leading to a complicated, gender-bending love triangle.
Meanwhile, adding to the complicated web of affection is Olivia's pompous and puritanical servant Malvolio, who both loves Olivia and sees her as a means of social advancement. Malvolio is pranked by a group of comic characters led by Olivia's drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and convinced that Olivia returns his affection. Through a succession of increasingly cruel pranks, Malvolio is eventually declared insane and locked up.
The confusion reaches its climax when Sebastian turns up alive and marries Olivia, who mistakes him for Cesario. Cesario and Sebastian eventually come face-to-face and reveal Viola's ruse. The play ends with Viola and Orsino and Sebastian and Olivia happily paired off.
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In keeping with the holiday of Twelfth Night, the play portrays a world turned upside down. One of the inversions in the play that has most contemporary significance is its complicated portrayal of gender and sexuality.
Twelfth Night is not the only Shakespeare play to feature cross-dressing. Most notably, the heroine of As You Like It, Rosalind, also disguises herself as a boy. And these cross-dressing women were also, on one level, references to the fact that all of Shakespeare's female characters were originally performed by males in female clothing, since women were not allowed to perform onstage in Shakespeare's time. This use of drag, the contemporary term for wearing clothes typically assigned to a different gender, is used to comedic effect in both As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
However, Twelfth Night goes further with its gender confusion than As You Like It. Unlike Rosalind, Viola, while in male drag, inspires same-sex attraction when she causes Olivia to be attracted to her. And the similarity in appearance between Sebastian and Viola, both in and out of her male drag, gives both of them qualities of androgyny, or having elements of both male and female. Androgyny is also somewhat present in Olivia, who breaks custom for women and becomes the pursuer in her relationship with Cesario/Sebastian, and Orsino, whose passivity and obsession with love give him stereotypically feminine qualities.
This flipping of the normal expectations about gender and its relationship to both appearance and actions is in line with the 'world turned upside down' theme of the Twelfth Night holiday. And the play sets things right at the end with its perfectly paired heterosexual couples of Olivia and Sebastian and Orsino and Viola. However, the play's portrayal of a world in which gender and sexuality are not fixed has made it speak to a modern world which is grappling with similar questions.
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The play's portrayal of gender and sexuality has made it speak to contemporary audiences and it has influenced much contemporary popular culture which deals with similar issues.
The Oscar-winning 1998 film Shakespeare in Love, a fictional account of a young Shakespeare's romance with a noblewoman named Viola, uses Twelfth Night as a reference point. Viola wants to be an actor and gets around the ban on female actors by dressing as a boy (who then, of course, will dress as a girl to play Juliet). The film ends with Shakespeare writing Twelfth Night inspired by Viola.
The 2006 teen film She's the Man also interprets Viola's cross-dressing as a woman's rebellion against sexism. This modernized retelling of the play has its Viola dress as her twin brother Sebastian in order to join a soccer team after her girls' team is disbanded due to budget cuts. The film also touches on the play's themes of same-sex attraction as the Orsino character is unnerved by his feelings for 'Sebastian.'
The themes of same-sex attraction have also been highlighted in many productions, including several at the modern Globe Theatre in London, that revive the Shakespearean practice of all-male casting.
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Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, originally written to celebrate the holiday of the same name, is a play about the world turned upside down, as normal gender and class roles get inverted. Most notably, it features a gender-bending love triangle at its center based around the cross-dressed Viola, who pursues Duke Orsino while being pursued herself by Olivia.
This focus on breaking the traditional rules of gender and sexuality have made it a popular contemporary play, inspiring theatrical productions and and pop culture adaptations, including Shakespeare in Love and She's the Man, that highlight these aspects.
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