What is the main message of Twelfth Night?

The main message of Twelfth Night is that only the inner self is true. Virtually all of the characters in the play adopt disguises of one sort or another, yet they cannot suppress their true selves for very long. Beneath all the duplicity, disguises, and game-playing, there are people with real feelings, which they cannot help but express.

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As with all great plays, Twelfth Night has a number of morals that one can discern. Arguably the most significant of these is the importance of staying true to oneself. And yet, on the face of it, just about everyone is engaged in some kind of subterfuge, putting on a disguise to hide their true intentions. Whether it's Viola dressing up as Cesario or Maria writing a phony love letter to Malvolio purporting to be from Olivia, there's so much duplicity and game-playing going on that truth seems to be at a premium.

Even so, the true selves of those involved still rise to the surface. Their disguises of various sorts can only be worn for so long; at some point, they have to reveal themselves for who they really are. Viola may be adept at adopting the false persona of Cesario, but there's no disguising the depths of her true feelings for Duke Orsino.

By the same token, the machinations of Sir Toby Belch and Maria have shown that, with regards to the hapless Malvolio, there was always a fool beneath that stiff and superior countenance of his. Malvolio always thought that he was better than anyone else, but Sir Toby and Maria have demonstrated conclusively that when it comes to matters of the heart, he's as foolish as everyone else.

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What is the main theme of Twelfth Night?

Reductively, the theme of Twelfth Night is the joy and pain of love.  The play was written in Shakespeare's older years and he attempts to see love for all that is both good and bad about it.  This may explain why Twelfth Night has a subtitle, What You Will (the only play that has one, btw). What you want to take away from it, where you are in your life, or how love has treated you over the years will affect your interpretation. 

As for the characters who experience the pain of love:  there is Malvolio, who falls so madly in love with Olivia that he loses all sense of reality and is eventually becomes a lunatic, having to be physically restrained.  Or Orsinio, who falls so in love he likens it not to ectsasy but to disease.

A comedy first and foremost, everything turns out happily in the end and the more tender elements of love are revealed.  The whole Cesario/Viola thing has been straightened out, the Duke marries Viola, etc.  But throughout the merriment, there are sharp rocks just beneath the seemingly gentle waters of comedy, ready to bruise the feet of anyone who steps into its current unaware. 

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What are the main themes concerning love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?

In addition to what has already been stated, I think Twelfth Night places a focus on the ways in which people can get carried away by their own emotions while lacking an awareness concerning the person they would claim to be in love with. There is often a one-sided selfishness, and even an ignorance, about these various romantic subplots. We see a particularly clear example of this playing out in Malvolio's conviction that Olivia is...

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in love with him (even when it should be apparent that Olivia is in love with Cesario). Particularly noteworthy here is how he is tricked into presenting himself in a manner which Olivia herself is disposed to detest (and one would think, being her steward, he would not have been so ignorant about these kinds of details).

One can point also toward Orsino and his own one-sided pursuit of Olivia, or in Olivia's own case, her pursuit of Cesario, with that startling turn of fortune by which she mistakes Cesario (who is in truth a disguised Viola) for Viola's twin brother and ends up marrying the wrong person. In all of these cases, we have characters swept up in emotions while remaining willfully blind as to the realities of the people they would claim to love.

This is actually what makes Orsino's relationship with Viola so interesting: Orsino knew her first as Cesario (and indeed, for all that one can point out how rapidly he switches his affections from Olivia to Viola, it is at the same time worth noting that their friendship had been a very close one, with deep ties of affection, long before he learned the truth of Viola's deception). In Cesario, he had a close and highly trusted friend, someone he knew as a person, rather than just as an object of affection.

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What are the main themes concerning love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?

One of the dominant love themes in Twelfth Night is the arbitrariness or foolishness of love. We especially see both the arbitrariness and foolishness of love with respect to both Duke Orsino and Oliva. Duke Orsino proves to be foolish with respect to his persistent obsession over Olivia. He is so obsessed with her that he relentlessly pines for her, visualizing himself as a hart, or deer, being hunted by his emotions. Even the fact that she rejects him due to being in excessive mourning over her brother's death makes him pine for her even more. His line of reasoning is that if she can love a brother so deeply, how much more would she love a man she was in love with?Olivia portrays the theme of both the arbitrariness and foolishness of love first through her rejection of Orsino and then through falling for Viola as Cesario. Olivia really does not have a rational reason for rejecting Orsino, especially considering she admits she knows him to have an exceptional, noble character, as we see in her lines:

Your lord does know my mind; I cannot love himYet I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth;In voices well divulged, free learn'd, and valiant. (I.v.242-245)

These lines actually describe Orsino as quite a great catch; therefore, she is being portrayed as foolish for rejecting him. Not only that, she falls for Cesario who, based on Malvolio's descriptions of her, looks absolutely nothing like a real man, but more like a cross between a boy and a man. Hence, she has arbitrary reasons for preferring Cesario, showing us again the theme that love is both foolish and arbitrary.

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What is the theme of Twelfth Night?

The title of this play refers to a holiday during the time when people could feast and act in ways that were opposite to their usual personalities.  It was a way to let loose of general worries and daily routines and adopt, for a time, an alternate persona.

The characters in this play seem to have adopted this attitude even though they do not realize it.  Viola adopts the persona of her twin and pretends to be a man, while her actual twin.  Olivia, who spurns the duke in favor of Viola/Cesario, parallels the Duke's ultimate attraction to Viola.  The world, like the intent of the holiday, is turned upside down.  Of course, things settle down, and two, happy couples emerge at the end of the play, devoid of disguise.

The idea of donning a disguise or playing a role is attractive as a way of forgetting one's daily life.  This holiday, and the play, celebrates that.

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What is the theme of Twelfth Night?

Though Shakespeare's play is infused with delightful humor, its main theme arguably is the nature of love: who has it, who wants it, who deserves it. For example, Malvolio loves Olivia, but he will never have her and his character, "an affectioned ass" does not deserve her. As for the Duke, he happily gives up the Countess to the newcomer whe he learns that his 'boy" is a lovely maiden who will wed him. Sir Toby marries Maria for her wit, and in the end, it is only Malvolio who is unhappy, both for himself and envious of others who have fallen in love (love that is reciprocated.)

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What is the major theme of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night?

The one dominant theme underlying both the plot and subplot of Twelfth Night can be gleaned from the title of the play and more importantly the subtitle, Twelfth Night; or, What You Will. To understand the meaning of the title and how it connects to the dominant theme, one must first understand the traditions surrounding the Twelfth Night holiday, other wise called The Feast of Epiphany. Epiphany fell on the twelfth night after Christmas day, which marked the day that the Magi, or three Wise Men brought their gifts to baby Jesus. While one might expect an Epiphany celebration to reflect on Christmas traditions, in Elizabethan England, it was actually apparently a "time when excess and license were expected to run rampant" (eNotes, "Twelfth Night: Themes"). Shakespeare even wrote the play for an Epiphany party being held at one of the Inns of Court in 1602, and that particular party was apparently known to be "absolutely secular and even quite bawdy" ("Shakespeare's Twelfth Night"). Epiphany celebrations, especially the one this play was written for, were times of "masques, revels, defiance of authority, and general foolishness" ("Shakespeare's Twelfth Night"). Epiphany was also a "time of merry-making, of hard drinking, and of romantic (or lusty) pursuits" ("Themes"). Shakespeare's play perfectly illustrates the nature of the holiday, as well as human nature as exhibited during the holiday, which brings us to his subtitle, What You Will, meaning "take what you will [from this play]." On the surface, Shakespeare's play seems to be a nice comic love story, but on a deeper level, it is a portrayal of the foolishness of human nature, especially human nature displayed on wild, lawless nights. Hence, the central underlying theme in Twelfth Night is the foolishness of man.

We see foolishness exhibited in Duke Orsino's obsession with Olivia; in Olivia's obsessive, prolonged grief over her brother's death; in Maria's plan to humiliate Malvolio; in Sir Toby and Sir Andrew's drunken, bawdy behavior; and even in Malvolio's self-righteous behavior and arrogance. The only character who does not exhibit foolish behavior is ironically Feste the fool, or court jester. Feste is the only character who makes insightful commentsabout human nature, such as pointing out that Olivia is truly the fool for grieving so severely over the death of a brother whose soul is in heaven, as we see in his lines, "The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take a way the fool, gentlemen" (I.v.64-65). He even later insightfully calls Duke Orsino fickle, which indeed proves to be true.

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