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Twelfth Night is a play about desire’s power to override conventions of class, religion, and even gender. Several characters begin the play believing they want one thing, only to have love teach them they actually want something else. Orsino thinks he wants Olivia, until he falls in love with Viola (dressed as Cesario.)
Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain.
Get all the key plot points of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on one page. From the creators of SparkNotes.
Shakespeare’s Life & Times. Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare, scene summary, scene summaries, chapter summary, chapter summaries, short summary, criticism, literary criticism, review, scene synopsis, interpretation, teaching, lesson plan.
Explanation of the famous quotes in Twelfth Night, including all important speeches, comments, quotations, and monologues.
Twelfth Night is about illusion, deception, disguises, madness, and the extraordinary things that love will cause us to do—and to see. Read more about another Shakespeare comedy, Much Ado About Nothing .
What Does the Ending Mean? Viola and Sebastian’s reunion resolves the various confusions and deceptions amongst the Twelfth Night characters and restores society-approved heterosexual marriages and class distinctions. This “resolution”—a return to social order—is typical of Shakespearean comedies. Much of the play’s action has been ...
