The theme of mistaken identity and disguise is so central to many Shakespearean comedies that it is no surprise that many female characters are dressed as men. This ambiguity was further enhanced by young male performers playing these characters. These actors were dressed in a boy’s clothes, but they looked like a girl. Twelfthnight continues this ambiguity by introducing a true love-triangle between Orsino Olivia Viola. This love-triangle could be entirely heterosexual if Olivia is only interested in “Cesario,” who is male. Or it could simply be bisexual.
Shakespeare plays have different concepts of what sexuality is than today. Casey Charles summarizes Renaissance culture perfectly in “Gender Troubles in Twelfth Night”, where he says Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night included, was written “in an early modern society in which homosexuality and heterosexuality were not fixed nor associated as identity” (121). Casey Charles summarizes the Renaissance in his article “Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night” by saying that Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night, were written during an early modern culture where homo- and bisexuality was neither fixed nor associated with identity (121).
We can still categorize characters’ behavior and relate it to their current attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Lorna Hutson, in her article entitled “On Not Believing: Rhetoric & the Body in Twelfth night”, argues that it’s a mistake to think of characters as real people who are not agents or figures in a narrative. Analysis of sexual behaviors is essential to understanding the perspective and meaning of a piece of literature.
Plato’s Symposium demonstrates another important attitude to sexual behavior and the gender of Elizabethan society. Shakespeare, as a Renaissance scholar, would have been familiar with the classical texts and the views they spread throughout society. William W.E. In his article ‘Maid and Man in Twelfth night’ William W.E. Slights tells the story of the Symposium fable, wherein humans have originally four arms and four limbs but are split up by the Gods.
This fable describes the possible sexual orientations of humans, since some were half-male and half-female (children on the moon), while others were entirely male (children from the sun). This detail, that androgynous people represented heterosexuality, is a departure from modern perspectives that link gender ambiguity to homosexuality. People during the Renaissance were also preoccupied with classical ideas, which led them to hold the same perspective as in Symposium, where androgyny represents heterosexuality.
The initial Elizabethan audience would not necessarily have associated Viola’s transvestite behavior with lesbian behavior. Jessica Tvordi claims in her essay “Female Alliance & the Construction of Homoeroticism In As You Like It & Twelfth Night,” that the activities of the female transvestite tend to show the male characters (such as Orlando from As You Like It & Orsino from Twelfth Night) the opportunity to explore their sexuality through the transvestite rather than to shed light on the representation of women’s sexuality. Tvordi asserts that male characters are given the opportunity to explore sexuality by dressing as women in Shakespearean plays. This interpretation could be interpreted as sexist, implying that male sexuality takes precedence over female sexuality. Viola is in fact asserting her own homosexuality, particularly when she interacts Olivia, outside of the context for male sexuality. Charles says:
By limiting the effects of cross-dressing in theatre to male homoeroticism, we ignore the ambiguities created by transvestism and reintroduce gender binarism as a restriction on homoerotics. Cross-dressing isn’t just about male homoeroticism. Women attended the Globe. It would be a mistake to ignore the female side of cross-dressing. (132)
It does not follow that just because Viola is crossdressing, there cannot be homoerotic behaviours between Viola & Olivia.
Viola’s crossdressing actions can also be questioned, particularly in regards to her attempts to challenge her gender identity. Tvordi argues that Viola is not using her disguise for power, but rather to keep her place as a wife. Charles 135). I believe that Viola is subversive in her actions. Act I Scene V is a good example. She does not read what Orsino said, but instead improvises. Viola reads Olivia a poem by Orsino that follows the masculine tradition of referring to the female speaker as only subject to his actions, and not her own desires. Viola acknowledges Olivia’s feelings and her own by improvising. Jami Ake’s “Glimpsing a ‘Lesbian’ poetics in Twelfth-Night” describes this as a moment that breaks “Petrarchan rules [that] require…female silentness” (379).
This scene gives the female poets a chance to express themselves and their desires. Ake points out Viola’s speech, which is especially interesting, because “she does not imagine herself substituting as Olivia’s lover, but she loves… with the same kind of erotic passion as Orsino.” (380). Lorna Husson, in an essay entitled “On Not Being Deceived: The Body and Rhetoric of Twelfth-Night”, says that Olivia is attracted to Viola when she plays Cesario. Her argument in support of Ake’s claim also states this. Viola’s words, not her body, are what woo Olivia. Olivia’s love for Viola is therefore not gender-specific.
Twelfthnight is full of complex sexual and gender behaviors. But, as in Elizabethan attitudes, they do not always connect. One can incorporate historical perspectives on sexuality and gender into a modern perspective. In other words, it is necessary to bring the historical perspective of gender and sexuality into the modern context. We must move from an early contemporary perspective when “heterosexuality”, as well as “homosexuality”, was just beginning to develop, to one where labels for sexuality and gender identities have become hyper-specific and hyper-categorized. Olivia’s love of Cesario/Viola cannot be clearly defined as bisexual. Similarly, it is difficult to see how Viola could fit into the transgender category. Plato’s sun, moon, and earth children are not clearly separated from the rest of humanity.
Works Cited
Ake, Jami. “Glimpsing the Lesbian Poetics of Twelfth Night.” JSTOR. Web. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/4625073.
Charles, Casey. Theatre Journal, 49.2 (2000): 121 – 141. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/3208678
Gay, Penny. “Twelfth Day: Desire And Its Discontents.” Shakespeare’s Unruly Ladies. Routledge, 1994, pp. 17-47. Print.
Hutson, Lorna. Texas Studies in Literature and Language. 38.2 Summer 1996: 140-174. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/40755095
Slights William W. E. JSTOR. Web. Accessed 21 Oct. 2016. www.jstor.org/stable/27708834
Tvordi, Jessica. Female Alliance in As You Like It, Twelfthnight and Other Works. Women’s Alliances of Early Modern England. Susan Frye, Karen Robertson and Oxford University Press, 1998. 114-127. Print.
