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   kc4u Teacher
   College - Senior

   eNotes Editor

   Masks work at various levels in Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night. It is the pattern of masking and unmasking that holds on to the centre of this festive comedy. The theatrical tradition of the Elizabethan Masque is also at work, metaphorically, in the play. The masks highlight the recurrent Shakespearean theme of the appearance-reality dichotomy. The trope also connects between the main and the sub-plot and also helps in revealing the many authentic and inauthentic faces of love.

   There are actual masks like that of Viola, the heroine, who has to put it on to save her chastity in the unknown island and masquerade as a young page Cesario. It is this cross-gender mask that leads to Olivia's attraction for her (as him).

   On the other hand, there are masks of duplicity in the melancholic Malvolio, a sore thumb in the festive spirit of Illyrian low life and in the love-lorn duke Orsino whose very attitude to love is a kind of mask. The mask dupes, as we see the masked letter duping Malvolio, Malvolio masked as a madman, the mask of Cesario duping Antonio who mistakes her for his friend Sebastian. The role of Feste in all this, quite specifically, in the Dark House scene is that of a masked deceiver.

   These masks also underscore the dark undercurrents in the seemingly utopian land of Iallyria.

    

    

    

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   Posted by kc4u on Saturday October 31, 2009 at 4:32 AM