Olivia? More like, I’ll leave ya!
Imagine not knowing who you just married. Oh that’s right, Olivia doesn’t have to imagine, she married the twin of the “guy” she is madly in love with not knowing that the twin existed at all. Such a complicated situation is as common as water in 12th Night by everyone’s favorite tragedy writer, William Shakespeare. The issues surrounding who each character has fallen in love with drive the comedy into portraying serious issues into jokes. Everyone has a misperception of reality, even the concept of love is turned into a laughing stock.
12th Night portrays possibly the best love triangle ever made. Our love-struck teenage-boy-like Duke, Orsino, is in love with Olivia who is mourning her brother’s death. At the same time, Viola is in love with Orsino but cannot express this as she must pose as a man after “losing” her brother. The parallel between Olivia and Viola becomes all the more apparent at the climax of the play. The way love is portrayed in 12th Night is as something so irrational you cannot help but laugh at it. Characters seem to have very little to no foundation for their love. This becomes all the more clear in the climax of the play when Orsino realized his man-crush is actually…love? His love for Viola is as ingenuine as it was for Olivia. Both women are married to men who know little to nothing about them and only married them because they happen to have female organs. The all-male cast in the Global theater adaptation further pushes the insignificance of women at the time the play was written. In the end, poor Olivia gets the shortest end of the stick, married to a man she knows nothing about at all.
Aside from the slightly depressing portrayal of love, the servant’s work in this play as comedic relief does not go to waste. Again, love is used to put characters in very irrational situations. One of the servants, Maria, writes letters “from Olivia” to Malvolio. These letters convince the kill-joy Malvolio to act like a complete fool in front of Olivia. He is convinced that Olivia reciprocates his feelings for her and follows “her” orders to act like a loon. In reality, emotional manipulation is quite grave, but, the servants and the audience can agree that Malvolio deserves to be deceived for his lack of fun. The servants pull this gag as much as they can and get Malvolio locked up for his behavior towards Olivia.
Getting one person in trouble isn’t enough, Toby (another servant) convinces Andrew to duel Cesario(the man Olivia poses as). Andrew is more than willing to slice the life out of Cesario because he wants to ensure Olivia isn’t taken from him. Again, the lengths the character in this play will go “for” love is mind-boggling. Neither Andrew nor Olvia knows what the other fights light. Knowing this, Toby is able to convince each dueler that the other is extremely skilled. The fencing match that results from this gag by Toby pretty much sums up how most of my high school fencing matches were. Both sides overestimated their opponents and were very funny to observe.
In the end, 12th Night can be seen as a play with very deep implications about shallow love, where women stand in society, and misperceptions vs. reality. Shakespeare is able to integrate these deep ideas within this comedy while making a joke out of them. Something as serious as love is tampered with for the sake of amusement, and that is what makes 12th Night a solid rom-com.
