Twelfth Night Critic Quotes

Penny Gay - the Clown

The role of the Clown has thus a particular resonance: because he is a verbal quibbler

Peter Milward - Feste

he reveals the paradox not only of wit and folly

Keir Elam - Feste

Feste is the most astute commentator on the play of which he is part.

Enid Welsford

via Keir Elam - festivity

C. L. Barber - Sir Andrew and festivity

Aguecheek serves as foil to Sir Toby. But he also marks one limit as to what revelry can do for a man

Keir Elam - festivity

the play's festivities and confusions may be seen as part of the movement towards social and individual renewal.

Kiernan Ryan - festivity

The raucous conduct of the tipsy triumvirate violates the fundamental principles on which the decorum of everyday social life depends.

C.L. Barber - festive comedy

From release through to clarification

Kiernan Ryan - on Sir Toby IV.ii: 'well rid of the knavery'

the comedy has got out of hand and crossed the line that divides it from barbarity and the pathos of the victimized.

Casey Charles - gender and metatheatricality

In the doubly androgynous role of male actor playing a woman playing a man...[Viola's] success before the aristocratic Orsino and Olivia consequently points to the constructedness and performative character of gender itself

C. L. Barber - gender

Just as a saturnalian reversal of social roles need not threaten the social structure

Keir Elam - gender and social order

[Twelfth Night] uniquely fails to restore the social order of gender differentiation

Jean Howard

via Keir Elam - social order

C. L. Barber - order and chaos

Throughout the play a contrast is maintained between the taut

Kiernan Ryan - disguise

Viola's performance as Cesario in this sense is a metaphor for what all the characters in Twelfth Night are up to...passing themselves off as whoever they are supposed to be by playing parts that don't coincide with them

Lisa Jardine

via Casey Charles - cross-dressing

Karen Grief - disguise

Appearances constantly fluctuate between what is real and what is illusionary

Miranda Fay Thomas - disguise

Twelfth Night reminds us that identity itself is relative

Amy Smith - Olivia

When she stage manages her own marriage choices...Olivia remodels the economic exchange of maidenhood

Keir Elam - Olivia

Olivia's initial malincolia is justified by her grief

Keir Elam - Viola and Olivia

'Viola' and 'Olivia' are virtual anagrams

C. L. Barber - Viola

Thus the shipwreck is made the occasion for Viola to exhibit an undaunted

Susie Campbell - Viola and gender

Viola's femininity is moulded around the imprint of masculinity

W. H. Auden - melancholy/festivity

The characters who welcome music in Illyria are more uniformly saddened by it

David Lewis - pretence

For both Orsino and Olivia

Elias Schwartz - Orsino

[he] 'does not take his postures seriously

Maurice Hunt - Orsino and Viola

by calling Viola "his fancy's queen

Maurice Hunt - Orsino and homoeroticism/self-love

While Orsino...responds intuitively to Viola's womanhood

Maurice Hunt - Orsino and self-love/projection

loving the Cesario aspect of the Diana-like Viola represents Orsino's fixation upon himself and consequent hoarding of desire.

Michael Dobson - Malvolio

The play is offering a glimpse not just of comic sexual self-delusion but of a potentially subversive upwards mobility

Keir Elam - Malvolio

Malvolio likewise affects 'sadness' as part of his 'Puritan' severity...his supposedly sad humour is as short-lived as Olivia's grief

upbraided by his mistress for his lover's smile

he reneges his former 'blackness' (the colour of melancholy-provoking bile)

Maurice Cherney - Malvolio

Whether Malvolio has been most notoriously abused

Penny Gay - class

Elizabethan concern with class is at the centre of this play

Penny Gay - class (longer)

So the high-born lady pursues the 'page-boy' throughout the play until such time as Sebastian turns up and re-establishes the normative heterosexuality (and class-structure) of romantic comedy.

Keir Elam - language

It is a play 'about' interpretation.

Paul Oliver - Feste and language

Feste acts as a facilitator and a liberator

Morris P. Tilley - Olivia and excess

The character of Olivia is open to no misunderstanding. She is the most impulsive of the whole impulsive group

nor do we feel the smallest surprise when her exaggerated grief gives sudden place to exaggerated passion.

Jonathan Bate - Orsino and Olivia

if Orsino is the conventional Elizabethan sonneteer

Emma Smith - Female characters and marriage

female characters' most spirited agency is directed to the most nominative of female destinies

Warren Grief - Viola

Orsino

Emma Smith - Gender

Opposite of Barber

Ian Judge - Madness

Twelfth Night also shows the comedy of love which occurs when people turn themselves inside out and almost reach the edge of madness