As
perhaps the most convoluted disguise plot of Shakespeare's comedies, Twelfth Night focuses on the love
triangle created through the disguise of Viola.
Shipwrecked in a foreign land, she disguises herself as a young man in
order to subsist while wooing the Lady Olivia in the name of her new-found
lord, Orsino. This situation is
complicated further as Viola falls for Orsino, and Olivia falls for Viola's
disguised male persona, Cesario. Amidst
this confusion many critics have found fodder for the argument that this love
triangle suggests a strong homoerotic element due in part to the Elizabethan use
of boy actors. As the Elizabethan
audience was accustomed to using imagination to create the play's reality, they
would have imaginatively accepted female characters as truly female. While the androgynous Viola of Twelfth Night
may seem a prime example of a critical reading in homoeroticism, this sexual
ambiguity instead depicts and leads to a heterosexual conclusion. Orsino and Olivia are not homosexual because
of their involvement with Viola, but are instead attracted to the “proper"
opposite-sex traits they perceive through her disguise. Viola's heterosexual desire for Orsino is
commented upon and affirmed throughout the play, causing her disguise to become
a source of distress. Viola's
temporarily ambiguous state of gender serves not to create homoerotic tension,
but to advance and resolve the plot in order to show the necessity of this
disguise. Contrary to critical
speculation, Shakespeare utilizes the love triangle between Viola, Olivia, and
Orsino as an affirmation of heterosexual values.
Because an Elizabethan production of
Twelfth Night would have used an all
male cast, many have speculated upon the sexual connotations of such a
performance. Keith Dorwick's essay in
the Journal of Bisexuality erroneously
seeks, like many critics, to provide a link between Shakespeare's all male
stage and sexuality by citing Romeo and
Juliet:
Juliet is played by a
cross-dressing boy, he/she’s both male (actor) and female (character)
simultaneously, and though Romeo the character doesn’t know it, he’s being
played by an actor who is bisexual through the operation of a divided sexuality
in which we must consider both the character and the actor and in which the
object of desire is both male and female. (76)
This same logic applies
to Orsino, Viola, and Olivia. According
to this argument any romantic involvement, including the love triangle of Twelfth Night, embodies a homoerotic
connotation. Viola would be interpreted
literally as a male, in love with Orsino, garnering the affections of a male
playing the part of Olivia.
The flaw in Dorwick's argument is that he ignores the
idea of the blank stage of imagination that is central to Henry V and many other plays. Contrasting Dorwick’s theory with the
ideas of the Elizabethan audience, Robert Kimbrough claims, "people going
to the theatre check their literal-mindedness at the door and willingly believe
anything they are asked to believe; the theatre is where illusion becomes
reality. An actor in role is whatever sex, age, and cultural origin the
playwright asserts" (17). Kimbrough
goes on to say that "We do Shakespeare a disservice not to accept his
women as women. We risk missing the full significance of the lines he gives
them" (17). Kimbrough's argument
affirms the advice of Chorus in Henry V,
allowing audiences to imagine that talk of horses onstage means just that, and
that onstage women are actually women.
Although much critical attention has been given to
the convention of using male actors on the Elizabethan stage, it is important
to note that these actors were portraying female parts that the audience was to
believe were truly female. Female roles within the play’s text are
written to be women. It is not until a stage production that boy actors
become a factor. This practice of the all male stage was a byproduct of
banning women from the stage, not something sought after by playwrights to
create a convoluted onstage sexual tension.
If one looks at the play through the Elizabethan lens instead of the
very literal contemporary lens, the men playing women become the actual women
they portray.
Without the concept of boy actors to
provide onstage homoerotic tension, the love triangle still presents the issue
of the female-as-male character of Viola/Cesario. In this case, Shakespeare's utilization of disguise
serves to advance the plot and develop the love triangle to its conclusion. According to Jonathan Crewe, the disguise of
Cesario becomes necessary: "solution in Twelfth Night requires
not only the deployment of the transvestite but something like a general
mobilization and subsequent fixation of desire effected through that figure"
(187). This fixation comes from Orsino
and Olivia, with the solution coming in the form of Orsino's marriage to Viola
and Olivia's marriage to Sebastian. While
this triangle initially seems homoerotic for both Olivia and Orsino, their
attraction is one that leads to a proper resolution: "Viola/Cesario is
assigned a crucial if paradoxical function in Twelfth Night. As
a highly improper, gender-ambiguous object of desire, s/he is scripted to
direct desire 'to its appropriate objects'" (Crewe 185). All of the sexual drama caused by the love
triangle is eventually resolved in a round of heterosexual marriages. These marriages allow Viola's disguise to
become a sort of divining rod that leads Olivia and Orsino to proper
heterosexual partners.
Proper
heterosexual desire is rooted in the interest Orsino and Olivia show toward
Viola. Viola's androgyny introduces a
more complicated paradigm to the play that allows Olivia and Orsino to see the
qualities within her that they prefer while ignoring the others: "Both Orsino and Olivia want whatever it
is that Viola/Cesario represents to them; in each case, what s/he represents is
an overdetermined complex of noncontradictory (and non-self-contradictory)
possibilities rather than any single or identifiable object" (Crewe
193). Because Viola embodies features
conducive to both sexes, Olivia does not strictly see a woman, nor does Orsino
strictly see a man.
Many
critics deny this double embodiment of features and believe that Olivia’s
attraction to Cesario is one of homosexual motivation: “the desires circulating
through the . . . Olivia/Viola/Cesario interaction, represent woman’s desire
for woman” (Traub 108). This is not the
case, however, as Olivia's feelings for Viola in disguise as Cesario are
developed naturally as a woman for a man.
She is attracted to the youthful features of Cesario
described by Malvolio as "Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough
for a boy: as a squash is before 'tis a peascod"
(1.5.130-31). Olivia's preoccupation
with Cesario comes not from homosexuality, but from the androgynous
connotations of youth. Within the plot she
actually believes Cesario is a man, and is attracted to what she mistakenly perceives
as a young man.
In
the case of Orsino, what many critics perceive as a same sex attraction to
Cesario becomes a stepping stone to a heterosexual marriage. Orsino's attraction to Viola comes from her female features
that are not changed from disguise, as his "language often
betrays an unacknowledged desire for the Diana within the male disguise"
(Howard 432). This desire has little to do with the boy actor who would
have been playing Viola. As Keir
Elam claims, "what is most prominent in Orsino's depiction of his servant is not so
much the object of his fascinated gaze, Cesario's body, as the object of his
enchanted audition, Cesario's voice . . ." (33). Orsino's focus on Cesario's "shrill
pipe" shows he is attracted to something decidedly feminine. Because the voice is something that cannot be
changed by a simple change of costume, Orsino's focus becomes based in
heterosexual terms as he is intrigued by Cesario’s feminine qualities.
While Orsino and Olivia are
interested in different aspects of Viola's disguise, she has no ambivalence
towards her own sexual preference. As
Jean Howard claims, "from the time Viola meets Orsino in I.iv there is no
doubt in the audience's mind of her heterosexual sexual orientation or her
properly 'feminine' subjectivity. As she says when she undertakes to be
Orsino's messenger to Olivia, 'Whoe'er I woo, myself would be his wife'
(I.iv.42)" (431). Despite her
deceptive appearance, her heterosexual feelings for Orsino are well articulated
through her dialogue. Her comments show
that the disguise hinders her true sexuality and becomes a negative factor. Howard goes on to observe Viola's feelings
toward her disguised state: "The audience always knows that underneath the
page's clothes is a 'real' woman, one who expresses dislike of her own disguise
('Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness' [II.ii.27]), and one who freely admits
that she has neither the desire nor the aptitude to play the man's part in
phallic swordplay" (431).
Viola's distaste for her disguise as
Cesario is made clear through the play, and is the cause of much distress on
her part. As Kimbrough claims, "Viola
feels self-constricted and self-conscious throughout the play. She is
especially conscious of her sexual identity, far more sex-aware, far more
troubled by the sex of her sex than is Rosalind. As a result, the girl-as-boy
motif is presented as somewhat, though innocently, unnatural" (28). This motif becomes problematic because it
interferes with her goals: it brings unwanted same-sex affection from Olivia,
and keeps her from Orsino's affection by forcing her to woo another woman in
his name. Her dialogue shows that she is
well aware of the consequences of her outward appearance. This awareness is demonstrated as Malvolio
approaches her with the ring from Olivia: "Fortune forbid my outside have
not charmed her!" (2.2.15). She attempts to dissuade Olivia without
revealing her disguise, claiming "I am not what I am" (3.1.126). She condemns Olivia's feelings for her,
saying "I pity you" (3.1.108), attempting to make it clear that Olivia’s
feelings for her are unwelcome.
Viola may not enjoy her disguise or
the unwanted attention it garners, but it serves as her only means of
survival. Her androgynous disguise
becomes a way to break free from gender bonds, but does so for the sake of
necessity. This motivation for disguise
is rooted in the opportunities afforded her sex. For Shakespearean women, becoming a male is
something a heroine like Viola must do in order to expand her opportunities in
the world. Viola seizes these
opportunities as she becomes "a young man able to pass through a man’s
world with relative impunity" (Dorwick 73). Because she is shipwrecked
and stranded on a foreign shore, a drastic change is necessary to eke out a
proper livelihood. Within this context, Illyria's
culture mirrors Elizabethan society as a place where a woman's independence was
rarely exercised. For this reason Viola makes
a conscious decision to disguise herself.
As Kimbrough claims of Shakespeare's men and women, "each is trying
. . . to break out of the frustrating confines of what society has labeled
appropriate behavior for a woman or for a man" (18). This allusion to the tightly defined roles
imposed upon gender in Elizabethan England can partly explain the motivation
for her disguise. These roles afforded
few options which could easily prompt someone like Viola to circumvent them by
dressing as a man.
As Viola dresses in men's clothing,
courts a woman, and ultimately marries a man, she does so to create opportunity
in a world where there is little to none.
Despite these events her sexual orientation, and those of Orsino and
Olivia, never changes through the play. They
may mistake Cesario’s features, but they do so without homosexual intentions. While labels of sexual orientation for these
characters were not clearly defined in Elizabethan England, they are readily
available in modern society. Increased
acceptance of homosexuality in contemporary culture has created a popular trend
of criticism seeking to read Shakespeare with contemporary assumptions. Implying the homoerotic connotations of a
woman's love for a man, or any other disguised female character who courts a
lover in disguise, seems far from Shakespeare's intent. It is probable that Shakespeare's use of the
disguised heroine was intended for other purposes like the use of dramatic
irony, allowing him to craft humor at the expense of the fooled Olivia and
Orsino who are unwittingly doing something unnatural. Contrary to critical suggestions of
homoeroticism, it seems more likely that disguised heroines of the stage
allowed for the exploration of themes and comedy that would otherwise be
impossible.
Works Cited
Crewe,
Jonathan. "In the Field of Dreams: Transvestism in Twelfth Night and The
Crying Game." Shakespeare: The Critical Complex Shakespeare and Gender.
Ed. Orgel Keilen. New York: Garland Publishing, 1999. 183-199. Print.
Dorwick,
Keith. "Boys Will Still Be Boys: Bisexuality and the Fate of the
Shakespearean Boy Actress on Stage and Screen." Journal of Bisexuality
7.1/2 (2007): 71-88. Print.
Elam,
Keir. "The Fertile Eunuch: Twelfth Night, Early Modern Intercourse, and
the Fruits of Castration." Shakespeare Quarterly 47.1 (1996): 1-36. Print.
Howard,
Jean. "Crossdressing, The Theatre, and Gender Struggle in Early Modern
England." Shakespeare Quarterly 39.4 (1988): 418-440. Print.
Kimbrough,
Robert. "Androgyny Seen Through Shakespeare's Disguise." Shakespeare
Quarterly 33.1 (1982): 17-33. Print.
Rackin,
Phyllis. "Androgyny, Mimesis, and the Marriage of the Boy Heroine on the
English Renaissance Stage." PMLA 102.1 (1987): 29-41. Print.
Shakespeare,
William. Twelfth Night. Ed. Rex Gibson.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.
Traub,
Valerie. Desire & Anxiety: Circulations of Sexuality in Shakespearean
Drama. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.
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