The Male Vs the Female: A Study of Viola’s Disguise in Twelfth Night

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The success of Cesario’s disguise lasts till the climax, where it is only when she herself admits to Sebastian that it was Viola underneath the clothes that everyone comes to know her true self.

Differences in characteristics:

The Viola seen in the beginning is a dame much in distress, since she thinks her brother might have been killed in the shipwreck. In fact, she first wishes she could work under Olivia, and this inclination might be because Olivia has lost her brother and is mourning, and perhaps it is the natural feminine empathy that arises in Viola. However once Viola disguises herself as Cesario, a common page, she has to balance between the two identities.

The asides in the play make sure the reader has no qualms about Cesario’s identity throughout. However, even when Viola plays Cesario very convincingly, the woman that she is struggles not to come out. While Viola had only decided to play Cesario to Orsino, she had not bargained to be a messenger of love to Olivia. Once Viola finds that she is to go to Olivia, she reluctantly tries to refuse but cannot, since her first duty as a man is towards Orsino.

Viola’s first grave mistake as Cesario is when she strays from the script and speaks to Olivia about what she would do if she were Orsino.

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate

And call upon my soul within the house.

Write loyal cantons of contemned love

And sing them loud even in the dead of night.” (Act 1, Scene V)

Listening to this from Cesario’s lips, Olivia finds herself attracted to Cesario’s ready wit and rhetoric, and starts falling in love with him. Viola does not realize this until later.

In the dialogs between Cesario and Olivia, there are several instances where Viola’s personality starkly shines through. The reader is of course aware that Viola is in love with Orsino. Thus when Cesario woos Olivia, it is with slight grudge and resentment. For instance when Olivia shows Cesario her face, the latter says, a tad sarcastically, “Excellently done, if God did all.”(Act 1, Scene V). Similarly, he calls her too proud, and when Olivia asks about his parentage, she lets on more truth than Olivia can guess and says that he is a gentleman.

Her conversation with Orsino is full of innuendos as well. She accepts that she is in love with someone of the Duke’s complexion and age, but her disguise prevents her from revealing that it is him she is in love with. At one point she almost blurts out the truth, but disguises it- “I am all the daughters of my father’s house, / And all the brothers too.”(Act 2, Scene V).

The greatest indication of Cesario being a woman is when Sir Andrew says she must fight. In Shakespeare’s time, women were no fighters, and Cesario’s legs turn to jelly when he must fight with a drunk and vociferous Sir Andrew. This is best seen when she says in an aside, “A little think would make me tell them how much I lack as a man” (Act V, Scene IV)

Nothing makes Viola happier than to finally divulge to Sebastian that she is indeed Viola herself. The reader detects relief, for it has not been easy for Viola to be in the middle of a love triangle all along.

Conclusion:

A modern re-reading of Twelfth Night gives rise to several doubts over the apparent simplicity with which the charade is carried out. It also makes one wonder that it is only Viola’s love that was unwavering and true, because both Orsino and Olivia settle for people they had not fallen in love with at the end. As to whether it was Viola’s self or Cesario’s that shone through, there can be no definite answer, for they are both sides of the same self, and complement each other.

References:

Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night. Alchemy Publishers, New Delhi: 2010.

Howard, Jean.E. Cross dressing, the Theatre and Gender Struggle in the Early English Theatre Shakespeare Quarterly, 1988.

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