Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare has often an over-looked theme of gender roles. Female homoeroticism, motive of mutual obligations, and sexual attraction are all major aspects of gender roles in the play that are not always identified. Jami Ake, Camille slights, and Casey Charles help analyze the importance of gender roles in Twelfth Night by explaining how relationships throughout the play are more than just a romantic comedy, but a slightly more complicated romantic comedy than what is the
“In Twelfth Night conventional expectations repeatedly give way to a different mode of perceiving the world” (Greenblatt 1187). This is exactly what happens when a closer look is given to the way Shakespeare addresses the concepts of gender and morality in the play. The audience of the day who accepted a distinct division of gender into masculinity and femininity – based on sex – and of morality based on absolute good and bad was given a different interpretation of these taken-for-granted definitions
in A Midsummer’s Night Dream and The Merchant of Venice. The next type of relationship that can be observed is “homoerotic ” relationships, or same-sex affiliations based on love and physical desire, which can be identified in the plays As You Like It and Twelfth Night, or What You Will. “Bisexual” relationships, people who experience love and physical desire oriented towards both sexes, are the next stage of Shakespeare’s relationship transition, and can be seen in Twelfth Night, or What You Will
Throughout ‘Twelfth Night’ Malvolio is vilified by Shakespeare, portrayed as a snide character who looks down on the fun, debauchery and excess of the play despite his low status. Shakespeare uses the vilifying of Malvolio to manipulate audiences into disliking the character, which in turn enables the treatment of Malvolio to be viewed as rather comical. However, it is debatable as to what extent this treatment is funny and to what extent it is cruel. For example, the general thesis is that