Twelfth Night: Characters (OCR A Level English Literature)

Characters

It is useful to consider each character as representing a function in the play. Understanding Shakespeare’s purpose for each character will help produce sophisticated analysis. Interpreting the play’s ideas by considering how each character may represent an idea or a sub-group in society, and how characters oppose each other or react to each other, is crucial.

Below you will find character profiles of:

• Viola (Cesario)

• Countess Olivia

• Duke Orsino

• Feste

• Malvolio

• Other characters

Viola (Cesario)

• The protagonist of the play, Viola, represents a young woman in strange territory 

• At the start of the play, Viola is shipwrecked and believes her twin brother, Sebastian, to have died at sea:

  • As an orphan (we are told her father died when she was 13 years old), Viola’s vulnerability and solitude is illustrated as she suffers a kind of ‘madness’ 

  • However, her disguise as a man, in order to work for the duke, allows her autonomy in the new land, Illyria 

• Viola’s cleverness, passion and quick wit, portrayed as the reason Olivia falls in love with her (although she is dressed as Cesario), suggests the fluidity of the play’s romances

• Viola is the heroine as well as the hero of the play:

  • Her line, “I am all the daughters of my father’s house/And all the brothers too” conveys a gender-fluid characterisation

• Viola is one of the only characters capable of maintaining control and self-discipline despite her intense emotions:

  • Her love for Orsino is proved as genuine and unwavering, while her bond with her brother is portrayed as constant

Countess Olivia

• Olivia is a noblewoman, a countess, in Illyria

• She is introduced as a woman in an extended period of mourning for her brother and father

• Shakespeare presents Olivia in similar circumstances to Viola:

  • Viola says, “O I wish I could serve that lady”, highlighting their connection

• Unusually, both female characters have autonomy as single women without male guardianship:

  • Part of Olivia’s grieving process is a denial of all male company for seven years

  • She has rejected the advances and communication of Duke Orsino and Sir Andrew Aguecheek

  • When Orsino sends his page-boy, Cesario (Viola), to woo Olivia on his behalf, she falls in love with Cesario who is not of a similar status 

• Shakespeare uses her character to illustrate the meaninglessness of her excessive show of grief:

  • She quickly falls in love with a man despite her apparent grief

  • In this way her character raises questions about love as a force for healing

  • Simultaneously, Olivia’s love for Cesario, who is really a woman, challenges ideas regarding homosexuality:

    • Sebastian tells her she is “betrothed both to a maid and man”

• Her character is portrayed, like Orsino’s, as insincere and fickle:

  • Her confusion, when she sees Sebastian (Viola’s twin brother rescued at sea), is comedic, mocking her ignorance

  • Olivia chooses an unfamiliar male over the person she fell in love with (Viola):

    • She stays married to Sebastian (a stranger) even when she learns his true identity

Duke Orsino

• Duke Orsino is a wealthy nobleman, a duke, in Illyria

• His unequited love for the Countess Olivia causes him grief and love sickness:

  • He is introduced as melancholy, in need of music to “feed” his emotions

  • His language consists of grandiose metaphor and a semantic field of excess:

    • He wants to feed on the intense emotions of unrequited love 

    • He appears to welcome the sickness it brings: "excess"; "surfeiting"; "appetite”; and “sickening" 

• Shakespeare illustrates how his melodramatic actions backfire when he sends his page-boy, Cesario, to woo Olivia on his behalf and she falls in love with Cesario instead

• Throughout the play, Orsino’s moods are shown as unpredictable:

  • He tells his musicians to “play on”, but a few lines later, commands them: “Enough, no more”

• To the audience, Orsino is seen as over-sensitive and obsessive, yet other characters view him as noble and good, “a gracious person”:

  • Perhaps Shakespeare is exploring the ease at which other characters are deceived by declarations of love

• In a comedy, characters are not punished at the play’s conclusion for their flaws, but are laughed at for their foibles:

  • His hyperbolic language and changeable temperament is mocked by the fool 

  • Orsino’s love for Olivia is shown as insincere at the end of the play

  • His proposal to Viola (previously Cesario) suggests the ease at which he has been deceived by appearance 

• At the end, Shakespeare uses Orisino’s character to highlight attitudes to marriage and gender restraints:

  • He asks Cesario to appear “in other habits” and to wear a “woman’s weeds” so he can make her his wife

Feste

• Feste is Olivia’s fool, or court jester

• In Elizabethan drama a fool represents the court jester, a man employed to entertain the court:

• The role of Feste contributes to the topsy-turvy, celebratory nature of the play’s setting:

  • Traditionally, on Twelfth Night, roles are reversed and rules are ignored

  • The night represents a catharsis, a restart

  • In the play, Feste’s songs imitate the lively nature of the festival

  • His wise and soulful songs introduce a reflective tone:

    • His songs repeatedly refer to winter, ageing and death

• Their omniscient position in court allowed them to voice their observations of courtly goings-on:

  • Although they are called fools, jesters were renowned for their sharp wit

  • Fools speak in sophisticated language, employing innuendo and metaphor to provide humour

• Feste’s character creates drama and comedy:

  • Typical of the role of jester, Feste is allowed to make fun of his master and mistress:

    • When Olivia asks Malvolio to take the fool away, Feste replies, “Do you not hear, fellows? Take away the lady”

    • He engages in the plot to humiliate Malvolio, teasing him mercilessly

• Elizabethan drama did not always characterise the fool with as dramatic a role as Feste in Twelfth Night:

  • His role within the main action of the play, as well as his role as omniscient observer, is a dramatic method which anticipates more modern plays 

  • Feste’s role is similar to that of a chorus in Greek drama

  • He comments on actions and characters. For example, he characterises Orsino to the audience:

    • He says that his clothes are “changeable taffeta” and his mind is as changeable as an opal

• The play’s denouement brings clarity and love to all the characters, except Feste:

  • His life is unchanged, suggesting a consistency of character 

Malvolio

• Malvolio’s character serves as a foil to the light-hearted characters in the play:

  • In particular, he contrasts the extreme revelry of Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek

• His character represents an ambitious and self-important court steward:

  • Olivia tells him, “O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite”

  • His ambition to marry Olivia is presented as deluded and selfish:

    • He believes winning Olivia will bring him his own improved status in court

    • His foolish dance to Olivia presents his insincerity and desperate ambition  

• Shakespeare characterises Malvolio as Puritanical:

  • Maria, a fellow member of the household, calls him puritanical as he dresses in black and is intensely earnest

  • The reference to Puritanism would be humorous to an Elizabethan audience:

    • Elizabethan stereotypes of a Puritan were that they tended to be hypocritical and hated joy

• Shakespeare mocks Malvolio’s vanity:

  • He is easily convinced by a fake letter that Olivia loves him

  • He still maintains he is being rational: “I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me, for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me”

  • The hilarious scene of Malvolio dancing in yellow stockings and cross-garters (which the audience have been told Olivia really hates) humiliates him

  • He is locked away for his ‘madness’

Other characters

Sir Toby Belch

• Sir Toby Belch is Olivia’s uncle, a penniless drunk whose power lies in his nobility 

• The drunken antics and banter between Sir Toby and Sir Andrew are, at first, funny and innocent:

  • They contribute to the celebratory mood of the festival

• However, his character changes and audiences see him take pleasure in his cruelty:

  • He enjoys reminding Malvolio of his lowly status

  • He is cruel to Malvolio, locking him up and taunting him

  • He tells Sir Andrew he has to fight Cesario to the death in order to win Olivia’s love

• At the end of the play, Sir Toby and Maria marry, based on a shared love of cunning pranks

Sir Andrew Aguecheek

• Sir Andrew is a foil to Sir Toby, in appearance and character:

  • While Sir Toby is large and confident, Sir Andrew is thin and doubtful

  • Sir Toby is clever, while Sir Andrew is foolish and gullible

• Sir Andrew Aguecheek is tricked by Sir Toby into believing (after a drunken night) that he could win Olivia’s hand in marriage:

  • Sir Toby describes him as "an ass-head, and a coxcomb, and a knave; a thin-faced knave, a gull"

• His name suggests an illness which entails shivering and fever, an "ague”

• Indeed, his cowardice is mocked when he is afraid to fight Cesario:

  • This is funnier for the audience who know Cesario is Viola, an untrained fighter

Maria 

• Maria is Olivia’s maid

• She and Sir Toby find a connection in their love of clever tricks:

  • They both seek to wreak revenge on Malvolio for his dull and self-obsessed nature

• Maria is portrayed, along with Feste and Sir Toby, as clever and quick-witted

• Her ability to mimic Olivia’s writing and skills of manipulation create the comedy of Malvolio’s deception