TWELFTH NIGHT: A STUDY OF GENDER AND HOMOEROTICISM

 

INTRODUCTION

Elizabeth Tudor or Elizabeth I’s accession to the English throne in 1558 challenged contemporary stereotypes about gender roles. She was the monarch and a woman in the patriarchal world of the then England. The members of her Privy Council were all men and it was also the expectation that the highest political position would be that of a male. She came to be known as a ‘female Prince’ at home and abroad, and the Parliamentary statute declared her a ‘king’ for political purposes. This raised serious questions between gender and power that undoubtedly has its reflection in the contemporary literature. Inversion of gender roles is depicted in the Elizabethan literature, especially in the plays of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and in the erotic poetry of the 1590s.

Queen Elizabeth I of England

Often this gender confusion in the Elizabethan literature is interpreted by many critics in terms of homosexual desire, but the term ‘homosexual’ had no currency at that time. However, to say that the modern form of homosexual identity did not exist before the word “homosexual” was coined in 1869 is not necessarily to say same-sex relationships or sexual practices had no cultural meaning before that time. (Chedgzoy 147) Homosexual relations at that time was defined by terms like ‘sodomy’ or ‘buggery’. In Elizabethan literature, more than homosexual relations, homosexual desires or homoeroticism can be traced.

There is abundance of debate revolving the theme of gender roles and homoeroticism in William Shakespeare’s one of the most popular later comedies Twelfth Night or What You Will.

DECONSTRUCTING THE BINARY GENDER ROLES

A portrait of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare in his works is seen to have deconstructed the traditional norms of his society at various occasions. He has rejected the ideas of love, beauty, time, nature and the world that had been created by both his precursors and contemporary artists. He set a higher and more modern standard in seeing the world which was beyond the imagination of not only his contemporaries but also many generations to come. Once such concept is deconstructing the idea of gender binaries.

Shakespeare breaks down the wall between ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ by making Viola in Twelfth Night adopt the identity of Cesario. This way she in no way can be differentiated from her brother Sebastian and we know this when the characters in the play are unable to differentiate between them. In this sense, Viola incorporates her brother’s identity into herself. Moreover, when she initially decides on adopting a different identity after arriving in Illyria, she tells the captain, “…I’ll serve this duke. Thou shalt present me as an eunuch to him.” (Shakespeare 169) This indifference to fixing gender punctures the idea of a ‘true’ masculinity or femininity.

Anne Hathaway as Viola/Cesario in a production of Twelfth Night

Shakespeare uses Viola’s cross-dressing as a weapon in deconstructing the gender binaries. In Twelfth Night, we not only see Viola just dressed as Cesario, but she also carries out the tasks of a man. Duke Orsino bestows upon Viola/Cesario, the task of courting Olivia on his behalf. As per Elizabethan tradition, this is the task of a man, which here is carried out by a woman, who is very much successful in doing so. Hence, Shakespeare again, deconstructs the binary concept of manly and womanly chores.

Eddie Redmayne as Cesario/Viola

This concept has been more and more naturalized by theatres as times as progressed. Laurie Osborne has an interesting take on the nineteenth century actresses who played Viola: 

The transvestite actress, with her strong economic draw and her erotic appeal to both sexes, challenged emerging gender hierarchies of public verses private and exceeded the heterosexual oppositions of male desire and female submission. (Osborne 163)

It is to be noted that confusing this concept of deconstructing the gender binaries with the theory that Shakespeare may have tried to create a third, unified, androgynous identity will be very farfetched, as at the end of the play ends on the note of a heterosexual marriage of Viola and Orsino. The concept is more similar to the idea of gender fluidity; it internalizes a plurality for each person in the margins of sexual difference, to be more accurate this concept blurs the lines of sexual difference drawn by humans.

THE LOVE TRIANGLE: VIOLA, OLIVIA AND ORSINO

Even though Twelfth Night ends in heterosexual marriages, there are overtones of homosexual attraction between the characters stuck in a love triangle – Viola, Olivia and Orsino. We find homoerotic bonds between both Olivia-Viola and Orsino-Viola.

A great example of the homoeroticism between Olivia and Viola/Cesario is the Interview Scene (Act 1 Scene 5) where “…the inadequacy of Orsino’s ostensibly heteroerotic Petrarchan discourse, surprisingly enough, gives rise to a pastoral poetics of female desire in Viola’s conversation with Olivia…Viola's successful wooing of Olivia in the interview scene affords us a glimpse of a tentative "lesbian" poetics as one female character imagines and articulates the words that will seduce another.” (Ake 376)

We see Orsino’s fondly love towards Cesario, that is, Viola, throughout the play. But the homoeroticism of this relation is established more when the audience does not find Viola changing her male attire at the end of the play. Moreover, Orsino’s final lines in the play reaffirm his love for Viola’s ‘masculine’ persona:

Viola (Jane Lapotaire) and Orsino (John Price), 1974, RSC

…Cesario, come 

–For so you shall be while you are a man;
But when in other habits you are seen,
Orsino’s mistress and his fancy queen. (Shakespeare 352)

As time has progressed, the more contemporary productions of Twelfth Night have put an increasing emphasis on questioning gender and sexuality dramatized in the comedy. One of the earliest staging of the play to do so was Peter Gill’s 1974 RSC production, dedicated to the ‘erotic metamorphoses’ of the central characters, notably Orsino, who was seen very passionately hugging Cesario.
Later in Lindsay Posner’s 2001 RSC version that focused on the play of cross-gender desires, the audience sees Cesario/Viola alternatively being vigorously kissed by Olivia and fondled lovingly by Orsino. These future interpretations of the play definitely establish the homoerotic over tones of these relations.

SAME SEX LOVE: ANTONIO AND SEBASTIAN

Antonio is the one character in Twelfth Night who is authentically experiencing intense feelings for someone of the same sex. Antonio’s feelings towards Sebastian seem to echo Orsino’s melodramatic love for Olivia, and Olivia’s exaggerated passion for Cesario. Like these characters Antonio is convinced he cannot live without one particular person, even though Sebastian seems to view him simply as a good friend. However, unlike Orsino and Olivia who find their heterosexual matches at the end of the play, Antonio’s love remain unrequited and his story unresolved.

Antonio and Sebastian in a Twelfth Night production

Antonio’s marginalized fate gives the idea that despite the attractions of homoeroticism, the pleasure Twelfth Night takes in it is not sustained. Critics speculate that Antonio has to suffer such a fate in the play as he was vocal about it desires in a society that was to very tolerant of same sex feelings. We find Antonio stating his feelings about Sebastian when held by the officers:

This comes with seeking you.
But there’s no remedy; I shall answer it.
What will you do now my necessity (Shakespeare 295)

On the other hand, despite Sebastian’s betrothal to Olivia, his own desires seem more complicated. Sebastian too seems to have some form of homoerotic feeling towards Antonio. We can see a glimpse of this in the final act when Sebastian is reunited with Antonio:

Antonio! O my dear Antonio,
How have the hours racked and tortured me
Since I have lost thee! (Shakespeare 338)

But the Elizabethan convention does not allow Shakespeare to give any of his characters homosexual endings, and thus: The homoerotic energies of Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are displaced onto Antonio, whose relation to Sebastian is finally sacrificed for the maintenance of institutionalized heterosexual and generational continuity. (Smith 169) However, future productions have taken Antonio and Sebastian’s relation more seriously and portrayed it in a more explicit manner. One such production is Lindsay Posner’s 2001 RSC version. Its homoerotic coup de theatre was the discovery of Sebastian and Antonio getting dressed on an unmade double bed on the beach after the shipwreck.

CONCLUSION

“As the theatre represents a space of metaphoric potential that can take advantage of the possibilities for disturbance and anarchy, so the stage provides a space for performances which include a homoerotic perspective.” (Cartmell 124) Shakespeare takes full advantage of this to portray characters that defied the conventions of his times. His characters in Twelfth Night create a benchmark for future critics to interpret cross-dressing and homoerotic affection in a different light. The play interrogates the exclusionary nature of the constructed categories of sex and challenges the symbolic hegemony of heterosexuality by producing representations or citations of same-sex love. Also, it breaks the gender stereotypes through Viola’s performance of duties that apparently can only be carried out by a man. To conclude, Shakespeare is successful is creating a timeless drama that was not only modern for his times, but it also gives ample space for future productions to include their own interpretations and modifications to it.

REFERENCES

Ake, Jami. "Glimpsing a 'Lesbian' Poetics in 'Twelfth Night'". Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 43, no. 2, 2003, pp. 375-394.

Cartmell, Deborah and Michael Scott, Editors. Talking Shakespeare. Palgrave, 2001.

Chedgzoy, Kate. Shakespeare's Queer Children: Sexual Politics and Contemporary Culture. Manchester University Press, 1995.

Osborne, Laurie E. The Trick of Singularity: "Twelfth Night" and the Performance Editions. University of Iowa Press, 1996.

Shakespeare, William and Kier Elam. Twelfth Night. Bloomsbury, 2008.

Smith, Emma, Editor. Shakespeare's Comedies. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2004.