To be female in a Shakespearean play is to be well-written. This is not to say his writing of women is perfect and free of misogynistic interpretations; for example, Shakespeare’s grim writing of Ophelia in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark has been under scrutiny for decades, if not longer. Rather, the claim here is that Shakespeare is one of the few authors in history to possess a genuine respect for women. His respect shows in his scrupulous storytelling—that is, his meticulously figurative language. Despite some legitimate issues his writing may have where women are concerned, he does still treat his female characters with respect. Truly, his major female protagonists are so complex that some of them overshadow their male counterparts. Even some of Shakespeare’s lesser known female protagonists have more depth than most modern female characters do, and the way he gives them depth is through his willingness in—or perhaps his insistence on—exploring female status in society and culture. For example, much of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will concerns itself with the themes of “identity” and “control” and investigates these two themes through the lens of the female experience. Either the characters of Twelfth Night mistake one person for another (e.g., when Olivia mistakes Sebastian for Viola/Cesario) or a character intentionally causes identity confusion (e.g., how Maria dupes Malvolio into believing Olivia is writing him love letters). Just as well, the characters of Twelfth Night either lack control of situations and/or control of people (e.g., how Orsino hopelessly pines for Olivia’s affection but cannot force her to love him), or they possess much control but only in certain situations (e.g., Maria is Olivia’s handmaiden and thus lacks formal authority, yet Maria is, for just the Malvolio subplot, a puppet master through which much of the play’s “communication failure”-style comedy derives).

Identity and control are the commanding themes in Twelfth Night. It is most fitting, then, that Viola is the protagonist of Twelfth Night—a play focused so markedly on the themes of identity and control—because Viola is the single character in Twelfth Night through which Shakespeare explores both identity and control (whereas the other characters are concerned with just one or the other). First, Shakespeare explores gender identity, sexual identity, and mistaken identity in Twelfth Night by making Viola crossdress—i.e., Viola convincingly disguises herself as a man named Cesario to become Orsino’s servant. In the process of Viola’s crossdressing, Orsino falls in love with her while she is still Cesario. Orsino’s attraction to Cesario poses the question: Does gender matter where love is concerned? Second, Shakespeare explores female power in Twelfth Night through Viola’s lack of control—e.g., Viola, as a servant with a false identity, has no formal authority or social status and thus cannot control what happens to her. Intriguingly, however, Shakespeare juxtaposes Viola’s lack of control against a psychological power Viola possesses over both Orsino and Olivia (the two characters in the play that possess the highest formal and social power). That is, while Viola has no formal or social power, she does have a psychological power that causes Orsino and Olivia, the most powerful characters in the play, to submit to her emotionally. Viola’s psychological grip on Orsino and Olivia even performs the impossible: It causes Orsino to love someone other than his precious Olivia, and it also causes Olivia to break her precious “no romance” oath. Additionally, Viola serves Orsino voluntarily; she was never forced into slavery. Through this situation Shakespeare asks his audiences: Are power and control absolute? Can one possess power yet lack control? Of course, Shakespeare is nothing without his language, and so the tool through which he implores his audience to evaluate the two themes of identity and control is his figurative language. Specifically, Shakespeare presents metaphors, symbols, and personifications through his characters (and Viola in particular) to craft a comical yet socially considerate tale that is, in terms of thematic progressiveness, centuries ahead of its time.

Shakespeare’s female protagonists are compelling literary figures. Just as Shakespeare, as a playwright, began from nothing and became legendary, so too does he help transform women in literature from flat caricatures to rounded people. In the case of Twelfth Night, Viola’s lack of control is deliberately written on by Shakespeare because Viola is a woman. Women in Shakespeare’s era did not possess the rights that twenty-first century women do. In fact, female actors, as noted by Stephen Greenblatt in The Norton Shakespeare, were scarce. Englishman of Shakespeare’s era “. . . had to travel abroad to see women actors” (1907) because women were prohibited from acting in London. Even Shakespeare’s acting company, The Globe, was strictly male. Yet despite working with an all-male company, Shakespeare found female power imperative enough to write on in many of his plays—none as prominently as in Twelfth Night through Viola’s struggles.

Shakespeare is progressive for his era—and arguably in modern day, too. Quite fairly, however, Shakespeare is not exempt from feminist criticism. One must remember that Viola’s existence, while revolutionary, is still a rarity in Shakespeare’s oeuvre precisely because Viola does not, unlike so many of Shakespeare’s other female protagonists, share “top billing,” as it were, with a male protagonist that overshadows her. Viola is both significant and socially progressive in this regard even if she is not Shakespeare’s greatest female protagonist. Consider, for example, Queen Cleopatra of Antony and Cleopatra. Cleopatra is in every way a better written character than Viola and she is arguably the most thematically crucial character in her play. Yet for all her importance—and she is debatably the true central figure of her story—Cleopatra is often overlooked in favor of Mark Antony. Likewise, Lady Macbeth of The Tragedy of Macbeth is much more sophisticated than Viola is; it is Lady Macbeth, not Macbeth, that pushes for the murder of King Duncan. Thus, Lady Macbeth is the reason the story happens. Yet later in the play, Lady Macbeth commits suicide off-stage after failing to control her emotions. From then on, Macbeth is the major protagonist of the play. Do Shakespeare’s women not deserve better? Even among his supporting casts, the men often overshadow the women despite the women being more important to the play’s themes. One of the more prominent examples of this phenomenon is found in Hamlet, which, again, is one of Shakespeare’s most criticized plays in terms of its portrayal of women. In Hamlet, the characters of Ophelia and Laertes are both valuable to the narrative, yet Ophelia drowns off-stage and thereafter serves as little more than as Prince Hamlet’s motivational grief, whereas Laertes enjoys an on-stage death—with proper last words!—after a climactic duel with Prince Hamlet. Therefore, while Ophelia’s death is more symbolically significant than Laertes’ death, it is Laertes who receives a more fantastic end. So even when Shakespeare’s women are more important to his narratives, his male characters often eclipse them.

Shakespeare does not preach; he entertains. Like all great storytellers he is didactic to some degree, yet he never forces any distinct opinion on his audiences. Rather, he emphasizes the strengths and weaknesses of all potential viewpoints and has his audiences weigh them to conclude for themselves which viewpoint is the most socially progressive— or culturally valuable, or morally acceptable. So when he writes Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, and Ophelia to be tragic, is he being misogynistic, or is he emphasizing the unfair circumstances of women in society so that audiences may treat women better? Shakespeare always presents such difficult questions about life, politics, and culture in his writing. For instance, in Hamlet he asks: Is murder ever justifiable? In Macbeth he asks: Does ethical ambition exist? And in Antony and Cleopatra he asks: To what extent is love worth pursuing? Notice that Shakespeare never explicitly answers these questions; he instead implies that the answer is different for each individual, even in such morally grey areas as murder, ambition, and romance. The way Shakespeare makes these implications is through the speeches of his various characters; his characters employ figurative language (such as hyperboles and alliterations) in their speeches to pose his dilemmas. The big dilemma of Twelfth Night is: Does gender matter where love is concerned? Shakespeare poses this question primarily through the voice of Viola (but also through Orsino and Olivia). Remember that Viola, in her covert servitude, possesses neither formal power nor social status, and so she possesses no control over anything. Officially, Viola is at the behest of Orsino and Olivia, the two characters in Twelfth Night who do possess high formal and social power. But Viola does, interestingly, come to possess a psychological power over Orsino and Olivia; eventually, this power makes both Orsino and Olivia fall in love with Viola. Still, Viola’s psychological grip is not a power that Viola can actually control; she never actually wishes for Olivia to fall in love with her, nor does she intend for Orsino to fall in love with her “Cesario” alias. Indeed, Viola laments the psychological power she “wields” in one of her speeches from Act 2:
 

I left no ring with her [Olivia]. What means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!
She made good view of me, indeed so much
That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
She loves me, sure! The cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
None of my lord’s [Orsino’s] ring? Why, he sent her none.
I am the man. If it be so, as ’tis,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!
Alas, our frailty is the cause, not we,
For such as we are made of, such we be.
How will this fadge? My master loves her dearly,
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him,
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.
What will become of this? As I am man,
My state is desperate for my master’s love.
As I am woman, now, alas the day,
What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe!
O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me to untie! (2.2.15-39)
 

In this speech, which will from this point be referred to as the “Waxen Hearts” speech, Viola makes use of several figures of speech—metaphors, symbols, and personifications—to pose Shakespeare’s major question, which, again, is: Does gender matter in love? Why, if the connection between two people is genuine, can men not love men and women not love women?

Olivia’s romantic attraction to Viola, while not inherently good or bad, is in this context a bad thing for three reasons: Orsino loves Olivia; Viola loves Orsino; and Viola cannot marry Olivia. First, if Orsino discovers that Olivia loves Viola, it would upset Orsino, which Viola does not want. Shakespeare explores this first reason through a personification of Viola’s conflicted feelings in the line “My state is desperate for my master’s love” (2.2.36) as well as through a metaphor of Viola’s meager self-esteem in the line “And I, poor monster. . .” (2.2.33). Viola’s “state” (i.e. her unrequited affection for Orsino) is not a literal person that feels something as pitifully human as desperation, and yet Shakespeare claims Viola’s feelings are so strong that they have come unto a life of their own for the sole purpose of doubling Viola’s emotional baggage. The true reason Viola says she is “desperate for [her] master’s love” is to remind the audience that she cannot reveal her true feelings to Orsino while (1) she is still disguised as Cesario, and (2) Orsino still loves Olivia. With this statement, Viola makes clear the metaphorical corner into which she is backed. Likewise, when Viola denotes herself to be a “poor monster,” she is not claiming to be a literal ghoul. She has no fangs or claws or wings; she is human. So by calling herself a monster, Viola means two non-literal things: One, Viola abhors herself for having seduced Olivia when Orsino already loves Olivia. And two, Viola thinks herself to be unattractive and uninteresting compared to Olivia; therefore, Olivia deserves more to be with Orsino than she.

Second, Viola loves Orsino, not Olivia; Viola wants nothing to do with Olivia’s affection. Shakespeare explores this second reason through a personification of Olivia’s eyes in the line “That sure methought her eyes had lost her tongue” (2.2.21) as well as through a personification of Viola’s misfortune in the line “Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!” (2.2.18). Just as Viola’s “state” is not a person, so too are Olivia’s eyes incapable of misplacing anything, much less a tongue. What Shakespeare actually means by Olivia’s eyes “losing her tongue” is that Olivia is unable to properly speak when she is in proximity of Viola. That is, Olivia is so smitten with Viola’s physical attractiveness that Olivia cannot concentrate on what she is saying, and so Olivia speaks in unfinished sentences. Similarly, Viola’s “fortune” does not literally possess the authority to forbid and permit realities; Shakespeare does not mean to say Viola’s fortune is now a sapient being that has bequeathed upon her a comical conundrum. Rather, with the line “Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her,” Shakespeare simply means for Viola to express her confusion. A more literal line for Viola to say would be, “Oh God, I hope Olivia isn’t romantically interested in me!” But of course, Shakespeare is never so straightforward; his work would not be studied so thoroughly if he were.

Third, Viola cannot marry Olivia because they are both women. Viola believes she cannot marry Olivia because homosexuality is nonstandard—taboo, even—in her era. Shakespeare explores this third reason with a symbol and a metaphor. The single figurative symbol in Viola’s “Waxen Hearts” speech is the ring she mentions just twice: Once in the line “I left no ring with her. What means this lady?” (2.2.15), and once more in the line “None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none” (2.2.22)? Rings by themselves are merely finger ornaments; they have no actual power or authority. Yet Olivia and Viola speak arrestingly on rings because rings—or, more specifically, wedding rings—are given deep emotional value: Rings represent romance, marriage, and unbreakable bonds. So when Olivia insists that she possesses Viola’s ring, Olivia means to say that she loves Viola. Likewise, when Viola says “None of my lord’s ring,” she means that Olivia does not love Orsino; in addition, Viola means Orsino does not truly love Olivia—rather, he just loves the idea of loving her—which is why Olivia rejects Orsino’s advancements. And so Viola loves Orsino; Orsino loves Olivia; and Olivia loves Viola. Their situation is less like a triangle and more like a circle—or, in other words, a ring. This rounded love triangle frustrates Viola and amuses the audience. Her frustration is appropriately summed up in the last line of her “Waxen Hearts” speech: “It is too hard a knot for me to untie!” (2.2.39). By “it” Viola means the love triangle; she metaphorically refers to the love triangle as an impossibly tight knot, which marks several things: First, the situation is a simple one, just as knots are simple things; second, just as knots are sometimes harder to untie than they should be, so too is Viola’s love triangle a simple yet tangled mess; and third, when Viola says the knot is “too hard . . . for me,” she means the situation is too complex for her to do anything about it on her own—she feels as though she requires assistance from outside forces to end her “love ring.” The symbol of the ring is the strongest figure of speech in Viola’s “Waxen Hearts” speech because of its likeness to a knot that cannot be undone. Were it not for the sudden appearance of Sebastian, Viola’s brother, at the end, Viola would have never gotten out of her love triangle with Orsino and Olivia. It is a good thing, then, Sebastian appears at the end; because Sebastian resembles Olivia when she is disguised as Cesario, it is as if Sebastian represents Olivia’s unconfident self-splitting from her so that she may finally grow bold enough to reveal herself to Orsino.

Through the exaggerated nature of his figurative language, Shakespeare adequately announces to his audiences the comedic value of Viola’s “Waxen Hearts” speech. Yet the true purpose of Viola’s “Waxen Hearts” speech is not to inform audiences that Viola is now involved in a love triangle with Orsino and Olivia; audiences can already infer by Act 2 that there is a love triangle between the three characters by observing Olivia’s flirtatious behavior toward Viola. Thus, Viola’s “Waxen Hearts” speech, while amusing, seems unnecessary in that regard. So why does Shakespeare include the speech? Perhaps the reason Shakespeare has Viola say anything on the matter of the love triangle (other than because the “Waxen Hearts” speech is amusing, and amusement is important to the entertainment of the audience) is to remind audiences of the two major themes of the play: Identity and control. In the speech, Viola bemoans that Orsino, as of Act 2, only knows her as Cesario, which she believes prohibits her from romantically pursuing Orsino. Additionally, the speech makes clear that Olivia loves Viola and that Viola is in no position to reject Olivia’s advances; Viola lacks the power, and thus the control, to do so. Viola eventually overcomes her fears and reveals her true self to Orsino in Act 5, which pays off: She and Orsino immediately get together. The happy ending revolves around Viola’s triumphs as a woman; therefore, Viola’s struggles as a woman are central to this play, which is why her initial “Waxen Hearts” speech is so important: It highlights Viola’s struggles. Certainly, Viola is a more progressive character than Ophelia, and she is arguably more dominant in Twelfth Night than Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth are in Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth, respectively. Twelfth Night, then, is refreshingly atypical amongst Shakespeare’s plays for this reason: Not only are the women more important than the men, but the women are also dominant. And without preaching a word of misandry, the women masterfully drive the plot of Twelfth Night in such a (comedic) way that the men have no real power. Most significantly, none of the women die. Remember that Ophelia, Cleopatra, and Lady Macbeth all die—and not only do they die, but they each commit suicide. Admittedly, the only reason none of the women in Twelfth Night die is because Twelfth Night is a comedy rather than a tragedy, but even then, the play’s gendered role reversal makes Twelfth Night one of Shakespeare’s most special and socially progressive plays. And though Shakespeare’s writing in Twelfth Night is not as brilliant as it is in Hamlet, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra, he still illustrates the concept of female capability quite well through Viola, Olivia, and, to a lesser but more amusing extent, Maria. And through their capability, Twelfth Night strongly implies that gender does not matter when love is true; certainly, this message is eternal.
 

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