this document contain themes in twelfth night by William Shakespheare.

1. Themes in Twelfth Night
Assignment of Classical and Renaissance Drama
Prepared by:
Khalil Ullah
Hanif Ullah
Mustafa Kamal
Abbas Muhammad
Bilal Akbar
Submitted to: Mam Sonia Shah

2. Themes in Twelfth Night
• Major themes in Twelfth Night
• Love and Desire
• Melancholy
• Disguise and Deception
• The Uncertainty of Gender
• Gender and Sexual Identity

3. Love as 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.
• Example:-At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite”
that he wants to satisfy and cannot. at another point, he calls his
desires “fell and cruel hounds”.

4. Love and Desire
• Love and its fulfillment are primary in Shakespeare’s romantic
comedies. They are usually with unfamiliar remote, distant setting,
music, jest and finally a happy ending.
• Twelfth Night is typical example of Shakespeare comedy with all these
romantic elements.
• This play is a study of love in various versions. Every major characters
experience some form of love in the play i.e sentimental love, hasty
and passionate love, true and sincere love and mutual love.
• Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia. Voila falls in love with Orsino, while
disguised as pageboy, Cesario. Olivia falls in love with Cesario. This all
make a Love Triangle.

5. Love and Desire
• Desire strikes suddenly and unpredictably.
• Desire renders its victim helpless.
• Olivia is dismayed at her intense attraction to Cesario but is still
willing to risk it even though she fears she face rejection.
• Voila is helpless caught in love says “ It is too hard a knot for me to
unite”
• Malvolio truly believes that Olivia love him, despite difference in
class.
• Sebastain does not question his marriage to Olivia, but call it an
accident and flood of furtune.

6. Melancholy
• Melancholy in Renaissance was thought a sickness rather like modern
depression resulting from an imbalance in the fluids making up the
human body.
• Melancholy is thought to arise from love; primarily narcissistic self
love or unrequited love.
• Several characters in Twelfth Night suffer from some versions of love
melancholy.
• Orsino exhibits many symptoms of this disease including lethargy,
inactivity and interest in music and in poetry.
• Interest in music: “ of music be the food of love, play on; Give me
excess of it”

7. Melancholy
• Inactivity: “ that instant was I turned into a hart,”
• Same like Orsino, melancholic Olivia is shunning the outside world for
the next seven years and hiding her face in a dark veil, to honor her
live or her dead brother “ till seven years’ heat, shall not behold her
at ample view……….. With eyes effending brine,”
• Feste in melancholic mode about the fragility of youth and nearness
to death. “ youth’s a stuff will not endure”
• Though it emphasis on melancholy, Twelfth Night reveals the
painfulness of love at the same time, just as the play satirizes the way
in which its more excessive characters act in proclaiming their love, it
also satirizes same instance of melancholy and mourning that are
exaggerated.

8. Disguise and Deception
• Disguise means to give (some one) a different appearance in order to
conceal one’s identity.
• Characters in Twelfth Night constantly disguised themselves in order
to trick those around them.
• Voila disguising herself as the pageboy Cesario “ conceal me what I
am, and be my aid, for such disguise as haply shall became the form
of my intent”
• As when she finds insecure as female in Ilyria, Voila decides to
disguise herself, entrusting only the captain with herself.
• Maria and Sir Toby playing their pranks on Malvolio is also the most
notable example of trickery and role-playing in Twelfth Night.

9. Disguise and Deception
• Also Feste dressing up as the scholar, Sir Topas.
• Deception means to make some one believe something that is not
true.
• Shakespeare explores the theme of deception in Twelfth Night by
creating its characters to use deception in disguise to create comedy
in the play.
• Shakespeare presents the obvious deception in play that is Voila.
• Voila’s role is purely based upon of deception.
• She initially deceive everyone by disguising herself as a man, Cesario.

10. Disguise and Deception
• In order to serve Orsino, Voila acts as a pageboy.
• “ I’ll serve this Duke”
• She also deceive everyone else in the play.
• As a result of this deception and disguise , Olivia and Viola’s brother
Sebastian get married as Olivia thought that Sebastian is Cesario.
• While this deception also cause serious difficulties for Viola, even
threaten her life when Orsino falsely believes that Cesario has stolen
Olivia away from him.

11. Uncertainty of Gender
• Gender is most obvious and much discussed topic in Twelfth Night
play.
• When voila disguises her identity, the situation creates a sexual mess.
• Voila fell in love with Orsino but cannot tell him, because Orsino
considers her as Cesario, a man.
• While Olivia, the object of Orsino’s affections falls for Viola in her
guise as Cesario.
• Olivia is in love wit a women , even thinks he is a real man.
• Also, Orsino often remarks on Cesario’s beauty, suggesting that he is
attracted to Viola even when her male disguise is removed.

12. Uncertainty of Gender
• Orsino and Olivia both find tidy heterosexual gratification once the
sexual ambiguities and deceptions are straightened out.
• 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 time thou never should’st love
woman like to me”
• Similarly in his lines, Orsino declares, “ Cesario comes… for so you
shall be while you are a man, but when in others habit you are seen,
Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen”

13. Gender and Sexual Identity
• In Twelfth Night Gender and Sexual identity are portrayed as
ambiguous, unstable and sometime fluid.
• When Viola disguises fools Olivia into falling in love with her, is
genuinely funny.
• Viola’s transformation into Cesario, and Olivia’s impossible love for
him/her also imply that, maybe distinction between male and female
and homo/heterosexual are not as absolutely as you think.
• The play stresses on the potential ambiguity of gender, many
instances in which characters refers to Cesario as an effeminate man.

14. Gender and Sexual Identity
• Gender is something that you can influence, based on how they act,
rather than something that you are , based on the sexual organ you
were born with.
• Twelfth Night shows how gender switches make the characters Sexual
identities unstable.