A complicated and puzzling story, Twelfth Night’s problems begin with a title alluding to the final night of the Elizabethan Christmas season, even though the holiday is never mentioned. And it comes with an ambiguous subtitle (What You Will), which encourages us to employ our imagination (will) on the play’s events but which also acknowledges the power of desire (i.e.,will) over both characters and audience. This interest in the moral dynamics of desire, which can degrade or enhance human life, starts with his schoolboy translations of Ovid’s The Metamorphoses, considered the most elegant example of Latin rhetoric and style. In some fashion, those stories inform almost every one of his plays. Here in Twelfth Night, how characters respond to desire determines the joy made available to them. Whether love or something else is the attraction, Shakespeare considered desire the essential test of who we are.
Considered Shakespeare’s most mature comedy, Twelfth Night is a convoluted, bittersweet examination of the many ways humans jeopardize and sometimes derail love. Written about the same time as Hamlet, the story has 3 interrelated plots: Duke Orsino’s weird courtship of Olivia using an emissary, the disguised Viola, who is herself in love with Orsino; Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby, who tricks both Malvolio and Sir Andrew into believing Olivia might love each of them; and the unexpected romance between Viola’s twin, Sebastian, and Olivia which resolves the play’s many crazy complications. Though none of these themes and dramatic devices are new to Shakespeare, Twelfth Night’s unique combination prepares the way for the great tragedies to follow.