There are a few clips on YouTube from the 1995 production of Twelfth Night, directed by Trevor Nunn. Take a look at Olivia and Viola/Cesario’s exchanges in Act One, Scene Five and Act Three, Scene One. Malvolio “cross-gartered” can be seen here, beginning at about the 8:20 minute mark.

Something we discussed briefly in class, but I think deserves more attention is the issue of homosexual relationships in Shakespeare’s works. After reading Julie Crawford’s essay “The Homoerotics of Shakespeare’s Elizabethan Comedies,” I began to think more about the homosexual relationships or allusions to homosexual relationships that appear in Twelfth Night.

We discussed in class the differences between our 21st century understanding of sexuality and gender identity and that of the Renaissance period. My interest in the subject of homosexuality in Twelfth Night is not to question whether or not homosexuality caused anxieties among audiences, but rather why male-male relationships seem to be more acceptable, realistic, and even supported than female-female relationships.

If you haven’t read Crawford’s essay yet, it’s very helpful in terms of exploring the seeming double standard about homosexuality in Shakespeare’s collective works. In Twelfth Night specifically the relationship between Sebastian and Antonio is highly romanticized. It really seems like the ideal loving relationship. There is of course an underlying notion that the relationship cannot extend much further, but in general, no real criticisms about their involvement appears.

The encounters between Olivia and Viola as Cesario, however, are more complicated. While the audience knows Cesario’s true identity, Olivia remains oblivious to the fact that the “man” she has fallen in love with is really a woman. The confusion has a humorous air about it, but often it seems that the flirtatious exchanges from Cesario’s side are not an act at all. It becomes difficult to determine whether or not Viola might actually be attracted to Olivia.

It really struck me in my reading that not only is the female character Viola targeted as an object of comedy because she is playing the role of a man, but also her relationship with Olivia becomes a joke. I wondered if perhaps the reason for this had something to do with the anxieties about women that were discussed in the reading. Making a woman and her relationships the primary source of humor in the play seems to be reflective of the male desire to break down female power.

All of Olivia’s encounters are somewhat over the top. She is in love with a cross-dressed girl, a lower class and gullible servant is in love with her, and a duke will stop at nothing to court her successfully. The one successful relationship Olivia seems to have is with her servant Maria. Crawford’s essay points out that the idea of servant-master relationships is predominant in expressing homoeroticism in Shakespeare’s work. She even notes the relationship between Maria and Olivia as a strong example of this motif. There is some evidence in this relationship that female-female relationships were not being made entirely laughable, but I do find it interesting that Olivia’s character is defined as so “male” (living on her own, strong-willed, independent). Perhaps this is a way to allow the relationship to exist without fully empowering the female character as a female.

Overall I think that it is incredibly apparent that the idea of male companionship was largely accepted as a necessity, which is perhaps why Sebastian and Antonio can so freely express their affections to the audience. This could perhaps relate to the idea of anxiety since men may have felt they could not rely or depend upon a woman out of fear for her gaining too much power or control. I think the most important thing to consider, though, is that the women do end up “properly” with a male companion in the end, which says a lot about the expectations of the period.

This course examines how the body is imagined in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century theater. In plays by Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and others, bodies perform sexual acts; undergo torture, rape, and other forms of violence; experience selfhood; and suffer through the humiliations of old age. Reading these plays alongside current work by philosophers, legal experts, and anthropologists, we’ll ask how literature shapes the ways in which we think about our physical selves and the society in which we live. For instance, what does King Lear tell us about the bodily theme of aging, both in Shakespeare’s time and our own? Key topics to be investigated include the creation of sexual and gendered identities, the production of embodied political subjects, and the cultivation of urbanity.