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 play’s 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 love-struck as victims of some random force in the universe. Even the less melodramatic Viola sighs unhappily that “My state is desperate for my master’s love” (II.ii.35). This desperation has the potential to result in violence—as in Act V, scene i, when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he thinks that -Cesario has forsaken him to become Olivia’s 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, as with many of Shakespeare's comedies, employs cross-dressing as a narrative technique. When Viola disguises her identity, the situation creates a sexual mess: she falls in love with Orsino but cannot tell him, because he thinks she is a man, while Olivia, the object of Orsino’s 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 Cesario’s 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 Antonio’s 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 play’s close, Shakespeare leaves things somewhat murky, especially in the Orsino-Viola relationship. Orsino’s declaration of love to Viola suggests that he enjoys prolonging the pretense of Viola’s 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 should’st love woman like to me” (V.i.260–261). 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, / Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen” (V.i.372–375). 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.

Read more about ambiguous gender in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. 

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 course—not only because of Malvolio’s unattractive personality but also because Malvolio is not of noble blood. In the class system of Shakespeare’s 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 Malvolio’s 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, Malvolio’s antagonist, Maria, is able to increase her social standing by marrying Sir Toby. But it seems that Maria’s 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 doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace the upending of order and decorum but rather wants to blur class lines for himself alone.

Love and Desire

Love and desire function as powerful drivers of plot because they seem to strike suddenly and unpredictably, and because they render characters helpless to change their feelings. Olivia is startled and somewhat dismayed to recognize the desire she feels in response to Cesario. Viola echoes this sentiment when, finding herself trapped in a love triangle with Olivia and Orsino, she says that “It is too hard a knot for me to untie” (2.2.). When Malvolio starts to believe that Olivia is in love with him, he reasons that “Tis but fortune, all is fortune” (2.5.). Even though it seems surprising that a high-ranking woman like Olivia would be romantically interested in her own employee, Malvolio believes that Olivia’s love for him is a step toward his true destiny. Likewise, Sebastian doesn’t seek a logical explanation for Olivia’s strange behavior, trusting that their relationship is an “accident and flood of fortune” (4.3.). For most of the characters, with the notable exception of Malvolio, this strategy works well, since by the end of the play, everyone has found a partner they are happy with.

Disguise and Deception

When she first finds herself stranded in Ilyria, Viola decides to “conceal me what I am” (1.2.), entrusting only the Captain with her secret. As a young woman who could be vulnerable to attack or sexual assault, she is also much safer if she is disguised as a man. However, Viola quickly learns the cost of maintaining a disguise. Her intentions and actions are constantly misinterpreted, and she cannot correct these mistakes without betraying her secret. While disguise and deception cause serious difficulties for Viola, and even threaten her life when Orsino falsely believes that Cesario has stolen Olivia away from him, the play also suggests that disguise can serve a positive purpose as well. In a time when women were expected to follow strict rules of social decorum, Viola’s masculine disguise gives her the chance to speak her mind much more freely. This shift is most apparent in the scene where Orsino and the disguised Viola argue about how men and women behave in love. Viola stands up for women, arguing that “In faith, they are as true of heart as we” (2.4.).

Read more about disguises in Homer's The Odyssey.

Gender and Sexuality

In the play, gender and sexuality are portrayed as ambiguous, unstable, and sometimes fluid. When Viola disguises herself as a man, she stipulates that “thou shall present me as an eunuch to [the Duke]” (1.2.). In some cultures and historical periods, young men would be castrated in order to enter specific occupations, often as personal servants to high-ranking individuals, or in positions where they would have close contact with women. As a eunuch, Viola would be viewed as not quite a woman, and not quite a man. Both Orsino and Olivia recognize that Viola defies traditional binary gender conventions. Orsino comments about Cesario that “all is semblative a woman’s part” (1.4.) Interestingly, Viola’s ambivalent gender position seems to only make her more attractive. Other storylines also echo the idea of a fluid form of desire not rooted in gender. Orsino’s relationship with Cesario might simply be a close and affectionate friendship, but it also seems to hint at romantic elements, such as when he refers to Cesario as one “…whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly” (5.1.). However, while the play introduces elements of fluidity and ambiguity, it closes with a firmly heteronormative conclusion.

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