Twelfth Night critics

Emma Smith - Malvolio’s Puritanism and anti-festivity

“His downfall is a triumph of festivity over puritanical control”

Stephen Greenblatt - Social Class

“Characters construct identities to gain power.”

Mikhail Bakhtin – Carnivalesque theory

"Carnival is the temporary liberation from the established order."

Elsdon - Excess, power and comedy

“Twelfth Night quietly points up to the worst excesses of the powerful and invites us to see the funny side of it”

Elsdon - Conventions of comedy

“Shakespeare gives us the joyful conventions of comedy while simultaneously pointing out their falsity. “

Elsdon - Malvolio and Sir Toby

“Representation of the restrained spirit of Lent versus the free-wheeling spirit of Carnival”

Schalkwyk - Malvolio

“Malvolio is acting not on his own account but as Countess Olivia’s dutiful employee “

Bevington - Malvolio

“he is an enemy of merriment and hence a foe of the kind of theatre that Twelfth Night represents”

Hollander - Comedy

The play nevertheless seems almost intent on destroying the whole theory of comedy and of morality 

Tosh - Antonio

“Antonio’s instant adoration puts him in the same category as Olivia and Orsino”

Laroque - Ending

“Festive comedies do not really end in clarification”

Kerr -

“Tragedy speaks always of freedom. Comedy will speak of nothing but limitation “

McCulloch - Love

"none of these characters has yet discovered real love"

McCulloch - Malvolio’s desire

“dreams are all or his own advancement”

McCulloch - Orsino’s love

“He may be in love with an idea rather than a woman, but it is a splendid idea and one in which his belief is real enough”

Emma Smith - Comedy

"The salted caramel comedy, the Haribo sour of festivity"

Emma Smith - Comedy

“Comedy is too dangerous to its own hierarchal structures”

Emma Smith - Comedy

“To be funny is to push boundaries of taste and comedy”

David Bevington - Malvolio’s downfall

“the gulling of Malvolio is an enforcement of social order”

Stephen Greenblatt - Malvolio as a victim

“the audience becomes complicit in the cruelty”

Leslie Hutson - Malvolio’s ending

“subverts the typical comedic ending”

Anne Barton - Orsino and the Petrarchan lover

“Shakespeare questions the truthfulness of Petrarchan convention by making it appear absurd”

Valerie traub - Orsino’s indulgence

“his poetic language masks the absence of emotional truth”

Kiernan Ryan - Orsino’s melancholy love

“Orsino is in love with the idea of love”

Dolan - Homo-eroticism

“close attention to Cesario’s physical descriptions bring attention to the gender ambiguity and fluid erotic attractions, Olivia is attracted to a womannish man, and Orsino a mannish woman”

Stephen Greenblatt - The ending

“the instability of the ending shows that identity is not resolved, merely re-labelled”

Boose - Marriage

It is used to “re-domesticate” women

Charles - Sex and gender

“he interrogates the exclusionary nature of constricted categories of sex”

Boas - Viola and Gender

“Viola exemplifies a combination of masculine and feminine traits which allow her to subvert heteronormative expectations”

Boas - Identity

“His presentation of gender presents a productive route for thinking about the elasticity of identity”

Suzuki - Sex and gender

“Olivia adopts the male gaze”

Bloom - Madness

“Everyone is essentially mad without knowing it”

Sharon Hamilton - Orsino

his ‘“fantasies are entirely self-centred”

Christina Malcolmson - Desire

“Desire or “what you will” is the motivating force in the play”

Jack Monroe - Relationships

“Underpinning homoerotic themes”

Hurworth - Maria

“Gulling shows itself to be a reversible game since Toby himself is gulled most effectively by Maria”

Karen Grief - Ilyria

“Ilyria is a world of deceptive surfaces”

Kate Flint - Twelfth Night

“A time to put on masks, to play at being who you are not”

Priestly - Malvolio

“We are more likely to regard Malvolio with some measure of sympathy than was Shakespeare”

Bloom - Maria

She is a “High-spirited social climber”

Bloom - Feste

He is “benign” throughout the play

Logan - Fools

“The fool is the only sane person in this world”

Stevie Davies - Foolish wit

“The fool’s insight sees straight through the the facades of his fellow characters”

Elliot Krieger - Marxism

“A ruling class ideology operates within the play”

Kott - Satire

“With all its appearances of gaiety, it is a very bitter comedy about the Elizabethan dolce vita”

R.P. Draper - Cesario

“In her role as Cesario she enjoys a freedom of action which is denied to her as a woman”

Murry - Sadness

“a silvery undertone of saddness”

Emma Smith - Feste

Feste “tells the truths that other characters don’t want to hear”

Mears - Intelligence

“only Viola can match Feste intellectually”

Gregharty - Oblivious charactera

“feeble minded characters are more limited”