Journal Entry on Twelfth Night

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a comedy that plays with the theme of mistaken identity and false assumptions, which affects the major plot of the story as well as the subplots. A particularly rich scene of multiple mistaken identities occurs in Act 3, Scene 4, in which the major characters Malvolio, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Cesario/Viola are led into humorous situations by Maria and Sir Toby in the scene that have larger consequences in the plot of the story.

Malvolio’s major misunderstanding is through the forged note that Maria has provided him. His change in mood is apparent and intended for humor—he’s dressed up in such a ways as to be uncomfortable and odd looking, as he says, “I could be sad: this does make some / obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering…” (Shakespeare III.iv.1566–1567). He then goes on to quote the letter to Olivia without her knowledge of what he is saying, and the lines that he chooses, such as “Remember who commended thy yellow stockings” (Shakespeare III.iv.1590) is bewildering to the other characters and humorous for the audience, drawing more attention to the ridiculous change in Malvolio’s appearance. Malvolio then suffers a setback because his relationship with Olivia is strained by his assumed madness, and Sir Toby and Maria see that Malvolio is in a position to be further abused for their amusement. This act of abusing Malvolio further makes Sir Toby less sympathetic as a character, showing his cruelty, though by the end of the play Malvolio is given no recourse, so his abuses do not impact the major plot of the play in a significant or overly meaningful way.

The scene and interactions between Sir Toby, Andrew Aguecheek, and Cesario/Viola is mostly humorous, further showing Sir Toby’s abusive sense of humor, giving examples of Shakespeare’s wit with language, and helping to define the characters of Sir Toby and Andrew further. Andrew’s written challenge to Cesario is longwinded and not “saucy” as Andrew believes. Toby and Fabian gently mock Andrew as they read the challenge, and then Toby antagonizes both Cesario/Viola and Andrew further, using much more descriptive and vibrant language to describe the other in the attempt to “fright them both that they will one another by the look, like cockatrices” (Shakespeare III.iv.1735–1736). Toby’s back-and-forth between Andrew and Cesario/Viola illuminates elements of each person’s character and highlights the themes of class and gender in Twelfth Night. The audience knows that Viola is a woman impersonating a man, so there is no cowardice in her not wanting to fight. For Aguecheek, however, this scene shows his negative traits and makes him a poor option as a suitor for Olivia. Aguecheek begins the scene thinking he was ready to duel but becomes frightened and unwilling after Toby’s vivid but untrue description of Cesario’s fierceness. The duel is absurd because it is over the affection of a woman whom one of the duelists—Cesario/Viola—has rejected and the intentions of the other duelist—Sir Andrew—are unknown to Olivia, making both parties’ actions in the duel pointless. The development of Sir Andrew’s character as somewhat foolish and cowardly clears the way for more comic courting between Olivia and Viola and eventually leading to Olivia’s union to Sebastian at the end of the play.

The duel itself becomes a catalyst for bringing a crowd and setting up a further chain of events based on mistaken identity when Antonio mistakes Cesario/Viola for Sebastian. Sir Toby did not orchestrate this meeting, but it enables the play to move forward to bring all the characters together in the subsequent scenes.

Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. “Twelfth Night.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d.,http://shakespeare.mit.edu/twelfth_night/full.html