Essay: Twelfth night – use of doubles / pairing

William Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night in 1601, apparently to be performed on the twelfth feast day, the end of the Renaissance Christmas season. The play is one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s comedies and the use of doubles / pairing is a key theme within the play. Shakespeare uses pairing as a central dramaturgical devise, employing them to drive the plot, build character and also reflects on social and gender roles.
Shakespeare uses a double structure shrewdly within Twelfth Night, as it is built on two plots with their elements intersecting in Act III Scene IV with the deception of Malvolio and the duel between Sir Andrew and Viola. Until this point the two plots had been separated whilst still running parallel with each other, allowing pairs, doubles and reflections to be made between characters and situations, until the sub plot of tricking Malvolio affiliates with the main plot of Viola, Orsino and Olivia’s love triangle. In doing this, Shakespeare creates a perfect Volta to the play where the climax takes place. The two plots also create an ideal situation for structural juxtaposition. This play consisting of two plots therefore create a double narrative, the first main example of the reoccurring motif of doubles within Twelfth Night. The way Shakespeare puts scenes in a carefully planned out sequence creates genius dramatic irony and maintains the comic tone throughout as the audience always knows more than the characters do. However these layers of dramatic irony are sometimes lost within film adaptations of Twelfth Night for example in Trevor Nunn’s performance he delays the appearance of Sebastian, making Malvolio give the ring to Cesario after the scene between Olivia and Viola. Whilst this director decision adds realistic continuality it also results in the lack of dramatic irony at this point in the play.
The action of the play begins in Illyria, where we learn that the Duke, Orsino is madly in love with the lovely Olivia, with Viola being shipwrecked on the coast. Unable to find her twin brother Sebastian, Viola decides to take on the role of a man and seek work with Orsino, when Olivia falls in love with her, believing her to be a male. Immediately Shakespeare establishes profound pairs within the main plot. Some critics, such as John Manningham comment on how Twelfth Night borrows from The Comedy of Errors, where Shakespeare takes the tropes and motifs such as the idea of doubles or pairing (such as identical twins). Viola and Sebastian are the perfect example of this as they are identical twins, yet here Shakespeare pushes the boundaries and makes them male and female. Although the farcical tone establishes comedy, the use of doubles is the key comic element of the play that drives the plot. When Viola presumes Sebastian is lost at sea, Viola disguises herself as a man in order to fulfill the goal of finding her brother. The fact that she feels the need to hide her real gender in order to get a job with Orsino and to locate her brother suggests that women’s roles at the time were over circumscribed due to gender conventions and social rules. Through Viola’s disguise as a man she is able to bond with Orsino on more equal terms. The idea of Viola and Sebastian being a double is also reinforced at the very conclusion of the play where Olivia falls for and marries Sebastian, despite the fact that she was in love with Viola/Cesario. This therefore suggests that Viola and Sebastian are interchangeable. Viola’s chief problem throughout the play is undoubtedly one of identity. Due to her disguise, she must be both herself and Cesario. It is her twin’s appearance who saves Viola from this identity crisis as he successfully takes over the physical aspects that Viola no longer wishes to be – effectibly being liberated by him as she sheds her male disguise. The identical double appearance of Viola and Sebastian is therefore essential in the plot as this allows Viola to return to being herself, also therefore making it socially acceptable for her to be with Orsino. However despite Viola and Sebastian being the most obvious example of a double, they are not the most important.
Personally I think that the pair of Viola and Olivia is possibly the most interesting a socially challenging of all the pairs found within Twelfth Night. In Viola and Olivia’s first encounter in Act I Scene V, Viola acts as Cesario. Through Violas disguise as a male, Shakespeare “challenges gender permutations, boy-girl, boy-boy, and girl-girl”. In this scene She preaches her master (Orsino’s) great romantic pretensions. However half way through Cesario breaks the poetic speech with an anticlimactic interjection of prose “I took great pains to study it and ‘tis poetical”. This immediately undermines her master’s message. Due to Viola is posing as a man she therefore simultaneously challenges both her gender and social role in this scene. By maintaining the pretence to be a man and through undercutting the Duke of Illyria’s speech as she is the “surrogate wooer”. The most ironic part of this first encounter however is the point that Olivia is actually more attracted to Cesario as Viola speaks in her own voice.
Due to Viola acting as Cesario in this first meeting with Olivia, it is no surprise that Cesario, being the “male” dominates the scene as in the 1600s society would be inherently patriarchal. However as Cesario is actually Viola this once again subtly challenges gender roles as she is leading the conversation. The fact that Olivia is a countess also reinforces this idea of Viola challenging the social hierarchy, although both characters speak in prose during this meeting, suggesting a comfortable and equal atmosphere. The speech takes on a more stichomythic form as the characters as the two engage in verbal sparring between 184-94 after Olivia’s first interruption of Viola/Cesario. This rally of speech takes a slightly erotic tern as Viola/Cesario invites Olivia to “unveil” herself – puns were popular, beloved by the Elizabethans’. As Viola is now speaking as herself it is unclear why she should ask Olivia such a thing, something that tests the gender expectations of the time. Due to this being a play during the Elizabethan Era, there is also the fact that women were played by male actors on the stage due to the patriarchal Renaissance society. Orgel suggests in response to boys playing female roles that “the age of the actor is as irrelevant as the gender: womanliness is simply a matter of acting” (Orgel 70). This early modern stage convention therefore adds yet another layer of complexity to this gender disguise of Viola as she is a three fold character – ingeniously comic to the Elizabethan audience and something that was revived with an all male production of Twelfth Night in 2002 at Shakespeare’s Globe.
Another element that further affiliates Viola and Olivia as a pair is the fact that they are both in mourning, Viola for her twin Sebastian, and Olivia who morns a dead brother and father. In this sense grief is something that creates a reflection within them. Shakespeare’s employment of the pair of Viola and Olivia also plays with sexual possibilities as we know that Olivia has fallen for another woman and a man (Antonio) falls in love with another man but then mistakes a character pretending to be a man for the man he is in love with (mistakes Viola for Sebastian). This concept could be Shakespeare’s way of suggesting that “gender identity is in the eye of the beholder – a man is someone recognised and treated as a man rather than someone with a set biological identity.”
Another distinct pair within Twelfth Night is Olivia and Orsino. Both of these characters are comparable as they both convey analogous traits, the first one being the passion and love that both characters express. Olivia seems besotted with Cesario (Viola) and even attempts to beg that she is worthy of love “Cesario, by the roses of the spring….Love sought is good, but given unsought better.” (3.1. 148-155). This clearly shows how bold Olivia’s emotions are and how readily she expresses them. However, this love is questioned when she marries Sebastian purely because he resembles Cesario. Orsino simple yet complex, just like the woman he is in love with and pursues, Olivia. Just like Olivia, Orsino also omits strong passionate feelings of love “If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it…” (I.1.1). This hyperbolic and profligate first line of the entire play forefronts the theme of love between this pair. However it also presents Orsino as self absorbed as it is not until the end of this loving speech that we realise it is about Olivia. It also suggests that Orsino loves the thought of love and all that it embodies, perhaps not the person themselves. Once again this is a similarity between Olivia and Orsino as they both appear to boldly express love that may in fact be rather empty and unreal. This could suggest that people of the higher social status are more in love with the idea of love and marriage rather than actually falling in love with the right people, higher social class may therefore result in this case in a bigger ego. Orsino’s over use of romantic clichés based on unrequited love “my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E/re since pursue me” (I.1.22-3) reflect a more self obsessed character who focuses more on himself as the lover rather than the woman he claims to love – Olivia. The falseness of Orsino\’s love is compounded by the real emotion that Viola feels for her brother, Sebastian. It is also enhanced by his sudden declaration of love and request of marriage to Viola by Act V. However by the end of the play it is questionable whether Orsino is in love with Viola or more infatuated with the male persona she disguised herself with, this could be suggested due to him still referring to her as male “boy thou has said to me a thousand times” and using her disguised name “Cesario come, for so you shall be while you are a man”, “masculine usurped attire”. In a way this ends the play with Viola still not being reinstated as the female she is, ending on a challenging speculation of her binary gender identity as she is still dressed as a page. However I think this is more of a dramaturgical device as this shows her commitment to being Orsino’s page and also in terms of timing Viola has no time to change due to the pace at which Antonio has a moment of recognition with Sebastian.
Shakespeare uses interior disclosure from the plays male characters to present Olivia as “spirit of love”. Through this initial description we get from Orsino’s exclamation of his love for Olivia we could discern that Shakespeare is presenting Olivia as the stereotypical object of affection, a beautiful young woman whom men pine after. However it could be argued that Orsino has dual intentions, as to marry at this time would result in a dowry since marriage was often seen as a financial arrangement with the higher classes of Elizabethan Society, and Olivia would be seen as a suitable partner due to her status as “countess”. This is reinforced when Orsino imagines himself “king” (I.1.39) of Olivia’s affections. This would therefore suggest a marital hierarchy rather than mutuality. Orsino and Olivia also present themselves as being very accepting as in the conclusion of the play there seems to be a happy ending as the lovers are paired off into new pairs – Olivia and Sebastian and Orsino and Viola. Only moments before Olivia and Orsino thought Viola a man. Olivia also appears to accept Sebastian readily in marriage, suggesting that the ending owes more to dramatic convention rather than a realistic ending.
To continue addressing the exploration of social boundaries through Shakespeare’s use of doubles, Maria and Sir Toby Belch successfully challenge both gender roles and social roles. This is primarily through their status. Maria is Olivia’s maid, whereas Sir Toby is related to, or “consanguineous” to Olivia, immediately heightening his social status. Even Sir Toby’s vocative ‘sir’ reiterates this difference in social hierarchy. However by the end of the play, within the subplot, Sir Toby and Maria marry. This could suggest that Maria had aspirations to rise in status through marriage (something the Malvolio fails to do through Olivia) perhaps because Maria is more anarchic and therefore has no fear of breaking the rules of social expectation – to marry someone of your own status if you were from the working class. Another way Shakespeare uses Maria and Toby to challenge social and gender roles through their pairing is their use of sexual verbal sparring in Act I Scene III which includes many sexual innuendoes such as “now I let go your hand I am barren”. Here Maria is making an insinuation of sexual impotence” and therefore directly challenging Toby’s masculinity through jest. Toby however often refers to her as “wench” or “little villain”. This could be his own way of distancing himself from his emotions as social codes require him to seek a rich and worthy wife however Maria causes him to think otherwise “I could marry this wench”. As Toby follows through with this he successfully breaks the societal codes of the Elizabethan era.
The conclusion of the text appears to be a series of declarations and revelations between both true and false pairings. It is possible to suggest that Olivia is punished for not confining to the normal social codes of society for example defying Orsino’s love due to the love she spends on her dead brother rather than an ardent suitor and falling in love with another woman. Therefore marring a stranger based on physical attributes could be perceived as her punishment. However I believe the comic denouement of Twelfth Night is the repairing of the twins and various lovers, suggesting that gender is fluid characteristics within the play and that the homoerotic aspects of Twelfth Night is used to dramaturgically construct sexuality that is determined by the characters own gender identity.