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Clothes are powerful in Twelfth Night. They can symbolize changes in gender—Viola puts on male clothes to be taken for a male— as well as class distinctions. When Malvolio fantasizes about becoming a nobleman, he imagines the new clothes that he will have. When Feste impersonates Sir Topas, he puts on a nobleman’s garb, even though ...
Viola, disguised as Cesario, meets O. Sir Toby and Maria are married. Discuss Viola's use of her disguise in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After the shipwreck, Viola resolves to make the best of her situation and be taken into Orsino's service. As a young eunuch named Cesario, she will be safe from male attentions.
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How does Viola use her disguise in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?
Hallucination. At different points in the play, characters speak of having hallucinations and compare the feeling of being in love to hallucinating. By connecting love with hallucinations, Shakespeare stresses that love is often based on misperceptions… read analysis of Hallucination.
Symbols and motifs are key to understanding Twelfth Night as a play and identifying Shakespeare's social and political commentary. Death. Although no actual deaths occur in Twelfth Night, death haunts this play throughout. At the beginning, Olivia is mourning a dead brother. Sebastian and Viola have just survived a shipwreck, and each spends ...
Madness. No one is truly insane in Twelfth Night, yet a number of characters are accused of being mad, and a current of insanity or zaniness runs through the action of the play. After Sir Toby and Maria dupe Malvolio into believing that Olivia loves him, Malvolio behaves so bizarrely that he is assumed to be mad and is locked away in a dark room.
Jewelry. In Twelfth Night, jewelry serves as a concrete symbol of desire and affection. After Olivia first meets Cesario, she sends Malvolio after him to deliver a ring Cesario supposedly left behind. Viola knows the ring represents Olivia's love for Cesario. In Act 3, Scene 4, Olivia gives Viola (as Cesario) a "jewel" with her picture.
