Shakespeare’s Use of Disguise in The Twelfth Night

Use of Disguise in "The Twelfth Night":

Shakespeare was master-craftsman who has displayed great skill in the technique of the use of disguise. We find his mastery over this technique in The Merchant of Venice, As you Like It and The Twelfth Night. In The Twelfth Night Viola is the only character who assumes a disguise and her disguise affects all the other characters in the play profoundly. Her disguise is the real moving force of the main plot of this play.

Viola is a young and beautiful lady who is ship-wrecked on the shores of Illyria, a country unknown to her. She was rescued by a sea captain from perishing in the sea. After being saved, she decides to disguise herself as a boy and takes up service as a page with Duke Orsino of Illyria. She thinks of this device as she is alone and friendless and many dangers threaten a lonely and unprotected female.

Viola disguised as a man by the name of Cesario wins the Dukes’s confidence. The Duke is greatly impressed by Cesario’s handsome appearance and pleasant manners. The Duke asks Cesario to carry his message of love to Olivia who is not responding to his love. But the situation becomes complicated when Viola disguising as a man falls in love with Duke. Here Viola says in an aside;

…Yet, a barful strife!

Who’re I woo, myself would be his wife.

When Cesario (Viola) meets Olivia with the Duke’s message of love, Olivia makes it clear that she cannot love the Duke. Here another complication is created, when Olivia falls in love with Cesario not knowing that in reality Cesario is a woman, while we are aware of this fact. Thus viola loves the Duke, the Duke loves Olivia, who herself loves Viola, disguised as Cesario. All this mischief is caused by disguise. Viola feels helpless and exclaims.

O, time, thou must untangle this, not I

It is too hard a knot for me to untie.

When Cesario (Viola) pays her second visit to Olivia, Olivia begins to speak about her own love for Cesario. Olivia swears by the roses to the spring, by her maidenhood and by everything else that she loves Cesario so much that neither wit nor reason can hide her passion for Cesario. To all this pleading by her Cesario replies:

“That you do not think you are not what you are”

and

“I am not what I am”

This remark by Cesario is characterized by irony from the fact that Cesario is actually a woman and nobody else at this point in the play is aware of this fact. Only the audience and the readers and Cesario himself are aware of Cesario’s real identity.

Disguise, then, is the motive force behind much of the action in TheTwelfth Night. The chief victim of the evil of Viola’s disguise is Olivia who falls in love with Cesario thinking him to be a man. She mistakes Sebastian for Cesario and gets married with him. Then it is as a consequence of Viola’s male disguise that Sir Andrew and Sir Toby mistake Sebastian for Cesario attack Sebastian and get bloody coxcombs. Another victim of Viola’s make disguise is Antonio who mistakes Cesario for Sebastian and feels very angry with Cesario for not giving him back the purse which Antonio had given to Sebastian sometime before. Viola’s male disguise also involves her a most embarrassing and almost agonizing situation when she is told that Sir Andrew has decided to fight a duel with him. After coming to know that Olivia had fallen in love with her, Viola had said in a soliloquy:

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness.

Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.

The only gainer in this whole affair is Sebastian who wins Olivia as his wife without having made the least effort to do so. The Duke too is partly a gainer because he gets Viola as his wife after having failed miserably in his effort to win Olivia. But Olivia suffered much misery as a consequence of Viola’s male disguise. Thus disguise had proved an enemy to Olivia but as we have noted disguise has also proved an enemy to Antonio to Sir Toby and to Sir Andrew.

 

You Can also Read: Twelfth Night as a Romantic Comedy