Shakespeare’s 1623 comedic play Twelfth Night complicates sex and social roles, in order to explore further those sexual and social roles. In this play, a male actor plays the female character of Viola (as a male would play all female characters), who is then disguised as the male youth Cesario in the play itself. Disguised in this way, Viola is able to get close to Orsino and inspire Olivia’s affection to help counteract both Orsino’s and Olivia’s initial, Petrarchan notions of love.
In the beginning of Twelfth Night, Orsino only depicts a passive notion of love similar to the love portrayed by the speaker of a Petrarchan sonnet. Petrarch, the Italian sonneteer, created a style of sonnet in which the speaker idolizes the otherworldly beauty and grace of a cold, distant lover who could never reciprocate his love. The poetry itself keeps the speaker’s love alive, though the object of his desire is unattainable. In the opening scene of Twelfth Night, Orsino, stuck in the moment of first seeing Olivia, reminisces how he “thought she purged the air of pestilence” and compares her to the goddess Diana (19-22). Already, by comparing Olivia to a goddess, an otherworldly entity, and remarking upon her sweetness, Orsino acts the part of the Petrarchan speaker. In addition, the speaker of a Petrarchan sonnet often undergoes intense, self-torture rituals in order to be noticed by his distant lover. This self-inflicted pain is included in the poem to appeal to the lover’s sense of pity. In Scene 5 of Act 1, Viola states that Orsino loves Olivia “With adorations, fertile tears, / With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire” (242-243) in order to convey Orsino’s affection for Olivia. These statements are indicative of the pain the Petrarchan speaker undergoes in pursuing his inaccessible love. This passage in Scene 5 also suggests that Orsino is deliberately undergoing the self-torturing rituals of the Petrarchan lover in order to preserve his affection for the sake of feeling love, rather than to obtain Olivia’s love. This makes his initial notions of love and desire superficial.
Similarly, Olivia initially retains shallow notions of love and upholds Petrarchan ideals in her actions. Olivia first acts the part of the cold, distant object of affection in the Petrarchan sonnet by vowing never to see any suitors for seven years-until she is done mourning the death of her brother. Furthermore, Olivia mourns her brother only to keep her own affection alive. In Act 1, Scene 1, Valentine, one of Orsino’s attendants, remarks that Olivia paces her bedroom in tears “all this to season / A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh / And lasting in her sad remembrance” (29-31). In doing so, Olivia is crying to keep the love she has for her brother alive, paralleling the way that Orsino suffers only to keep his own affection for her alive and the way the Petrarchan lover tortures himself for keep his own love alive. Even Feste the fool remarks to Olivia that she is a fool “to mourn for [her] brother’s soul, being in heaven” (65-66), where she believes her brother’s soul lies in Act 1, Scene 5. Later in Twelfth Night, Olivia comes to represent the speaker in the Petrarchan sonnet as she seeks the love of Cesario despite the fact that he pledges not to love her. She even speaks like the Petrarchan speaker vowing to him “I love thee so that, [despite] all thy pride / [Neither] wit nor reason can my passion hide” (148-149) in Act 3, Scene 1. However, Olivia does not have as shallow a notion of love as Orsino, for she eventually comes out of her mourning and actively pursues Cesario instead of waiting in pain.
Viola, disguised as the male youth Cesario, challenges both Orsino’s and Olivia’s initial, Petrarchan notions of love. Viola’s ability to do so rests in her disguise, which allows her to move closely into each character’s social sphere and manipulate previously established sex roles. Viola’s disguise is able to dispute Orsino’s previously shallow notions of love by allowing her to get close to him and to plant non-Petrarchan notions of love in his head. Disguised as a man, Viola is able to get familiar enough with Orsino that he “[unclasps] / To [her] the book even of [his] secret soul” (scene 1.4, 13-14). The level of friendship that Orsino shares with Cesario would be impossible with Viola herself, because Orsino would still desire her to be the unattainable object of affection in a Petrarchan love sonnet. Thus, with Cesario as Orsino’s close friend, she is able to plant deeper notions of love into Orsino’s head. In Act 2 Scene 4, Viola, as Cesario, gives Orsino the hypothetical situation that a woman “Hath for your love as great a pang of heart / As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her. / You tell her so. Must she not then be answered” (89-91), opening him up to real love with an attainable object instead of love for the sake of feeling the pangs of love. Moreover, Viola is able to further her own ends as Cesario, by “theoretically” vowing her love for him. In the same scene, she says “My father had a daughter loved a man / As it might be, perhaps were I a woman / I should your lordship” (107-109). Yet, Orsino may not have truly given up his Petrarchan notions of love even with Cesario’s help, for he proclaims in the final scene of the play that Viola will become his mistress and “his fancy’s queen” (384), or the queen of his imagination similar to the object of devotion in the Petrarchan sonnet.
Viola’s disguise is able to awaken Olivia from her mourning and cause her to seek out a suitor, pulling her from her unresponsive, Petrarchan notion of love. Although Viola initially becomes the unreachable object of a Petrarchan sonnet while dressed as Cesario in Act 2, Scene 2-“I am the man [she loves]. If it be so… / Poor lady, she were better love a dream! / Disguise, I see thou art wickedness…” (25-27)-things change in the subsequent act. In Act 3, Scene 1, Olivia proclaims that “’tis time to smile again” (124) and comes to the conclusion that “Love sought is good, but given unsought is better” (153), showing that she forsakes rituals that keep love alive without an object and that she wants reciprocal devotion. Olivia’s notions of love also seem more transformed in relation to Orsino, after she marries Sebastian, Viola’s brother.
Viola’s disguise is able to help challenge both Orsino’s and Olivia’s shallow, Petrarchan notions of love. In her disguise, Viola is able to get close to Orsino, at first only living for the sake of love itself and not an object, and put non-Petrarchan ideas in his head. Similarly, Viola moves Olivia from her mourning period and makes her actively pursue a lover. Though Viola is able to help Olivia have a more in depth love than Orsino, both characters have changed from their initial states of desire.
Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Ed. M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt. The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 1. 8th ed. Vol. 1. New York: Norton &, 2006. 1079-139. Print.
