[In the following essay, Lewis contends that Antonio, rather than Viola, is the moral center of Twelfth Night, but acknowledges that the play is principally concerned with Viola's moral development.]

Disguise in Twelfth Night is sheer, a thin veil like the “cypress” that “hides” Olivia's “heart” in III.i.¹ Viola, although dressed in sturdier male clothing, almost reveals herself inadvertently at several points, as during the duel with Sir Andrew and the interviews with Olivia. Other of Shakespeare's strong, disguised women do not hover quite so closely on the brink of losing control: Portia commands her identity as judge, and Rosalind manipulates her boyish exterior to teach her future husband about love, only once verging on disclosing her true identity before she is ready to.² Viola's contrasting lack of sure control over her disguise points to a major theme unique to Twelfth Night: that of Epiphany, or the manifestation of truth. Such revelation is continually suggested in this comedy by the characters' ultimate inability to hide their true feelings and natures. This persistence of truth in coming to light parallels the manifestation of Christ to the Magi. But before any such revelation can occur in Twelfth Night, most of the characters must be transformed by the Christian folly which Saint Paul discusses and which Erasmus further develops.

Understanding how this transformation occurs depends, first, on demonstrating the presence of Christian allusions in the play's title, structure, and language. Only a handful of critics to date have begun to do so. But even these commentators have misperceived Viola's role by proclaiming her to be the play's moral center, though for most of the play she is not. That distinction falls on the sea captain Antonio, who has consistently been overlooked as a mere plot device: Antonio, at first glance, appears to do no more than help Viola to re-discover Sebastian and, later, to reveal her true identity. But Antonio actually serves a far deeper dramatic purpose. His behavior, language, and history mirror Christ's in ways suggesting Christian folly. He embodies and acts out the play's highest standard of Christian love, morally eclipsing Viola at first and yet finally linking Viola to the play's central moral. Viola eventually grows to imitate Antonio, displaying a sacrificial love appropriate to the celebration of holy Epiphany.

I

Most critics of Twelfth Night, having been reluctant to acknowledge its allusions to Christianity, apparently agree with Pepys' comment that Twelfth Night is “but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day.”³ One modern example is Anne Barton, who in the introduction to Twelfth Night in The Riverside Shakespeare maintains that the title refers not to holy Epiphany, but to “images of Epiphany as it was kept in [Shakespeare's] own time: a period of holiday abandon in which the normal rules and order of life were suspended or else deliberately inverted, in which serious issues and events mingled perplexingly with revelry and apparent madness.”⁴ Barton rejects the existence of any “specific references to the Feast of the Epiphany” in the play, as do even the critics who see Twelfth Night in clearly Christian terms.⁵

Yet a few critics have treated the work as an allusion to Christian Epiphany. Barbara Lewalski, for instance, argues that “… Shakespeare's method resembles, and was probably formed by, … the tradition of Christian typology, whereby certain real historical events and personages from the Old Testament and (more significantly for the present purposes) from certain classical fictions such as the Metamorphoses or the Aeneid were seen to point to aspects of Christ and of the Gospel story without losing their own historical or fictional reality.”⁶ John Hollander pursues the sort of “allegory” that Lewalski explains here when he notices the connection in Twelfth Night between revelation in general and the spirit of holy Epiphany:

Twelfth Night itself, the feast of the Epiphany, celebrates the discovery of the “True King” in the manger by the Wise Men. … The whole of Act V might be taken, in connection with “the plot” in a trivial sense, to be the other epiphany, the perception that follows the anagnorisis or discovery of classic dramaturgy. … The long final scene … serves to show forth the Caesario-King, and to unmask, discover, and reveal the fulfilled selves in the major characters.⁷

Hollander's reference to “the other epiphany” summons not only Aristotle, but James Joyce. Of course, Joyce's more general, yet still Christian use of the word postdates Shakespeare by centuries. But long before Joyce redefined it, churchmen appear to have used epiphany in the slightly more general sense of “a manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being.” As early as 1667, Jeremy Taylor mentions in a sermon Christ's “glorious epiphany on the mount.”⁸ Thus, in the later seventeenth century, the term did not pertain strictly to the manifestation of Christ to the Magi; that Taylor used the more general meaning of epiphany in a sermon implies his congregation's familiarity with—or at least their easy adaptability to—that meaning. Although Twelfth Night predates Taylor's sermon by over sixty years, I do not think it improbable that Shakespeare's audience was equally capable of imaginatively relating the Biblical Epiphany to other kinds of divine revelation, or even to revelation of truth in general. Certainly Shakespeare's extraordinary imagination was up to such obvious leaps. His original audience—possibly members of court or possibly lawyers—could surely follow him. To think that this audience was too steeped in knowledge of Twelfth Night revelry to see more serious, far-reaching implications in the title appears preposterous. The revealing of Christ to the Magi and the disclosure of true identity in Twelfth Night are too easily associated to dismiss the connection.

Hence, views of critics like Lewalski and Hollander, although in a minority, are finally more satisfying than a purely secular reading of Twelfth Night because a Christian approach can include the secular while also going beyond it.⁹ Such is the case in R. Chris Hassel's more recent discussion of Christian elements in Twelfth Night.¹⁰ Hassel does not so much as question the pervasiveness of Christian allusions in the play. He argues that Feste and Viola, agents of Pauline/Erasmian folly, free the romantic characters from childish emotional frigidity and self-love. Hence, Orsino and Olivia become prepared to enter marital relationships as adults, capable of loving others. For Hassel, then, as for Lewalski and Hollander, religious and secular concerns are closely united within a single work.

Yet all of the critics I have mentioned leave major gaps unfilled in discussing the Christianity of Twelfth Night. Like Lewalski and nearly every other critic of the play, for instance, Hassel assumes that Viola can do no wrong and that she has already reached moral maturity when we first see her. Lewalski even goes the extent of linking Viola and Sebastian to the “dual nature of Christ as human and divine”: Viola silently endures her suffering, and Sebastian triumphs by punishing.¹¹ But that reading is strained at best, even in light of Viola's generosity and patience. In fact, Viola has as much to learn about love, both romantic and Christian, as do, in Hassel's view, Orsino and Olivia. For most of the play, Viola remains far from Christlike.

II

If there is a figure throughout Twelfth Night who calls Christ to mind, it must surely be Antonio, whom Viola, however innocently, “denies” (III.iv.347). The language which Antonio speaks, as well as that which surrounds him, continually implies Christianity. He expresses his love for Sebastian in extravagant, almost unearthly terms: “If you will not murther me for my love, let me be your servant” (II.i.35-36). Later, he uses the language of religious devotion:

                                        This youth that you see here
I snatch'd one half out of the jaws of death,
Reliev'd him with such sanctity of love,
And to his image, which methought did promise
Most venerable worth, did I devotion.

(III.iv.359-63)

Lest we mistake this language for the overstatement of courtly love, we should look into it further. In the act of rescuing Viola/Cesario, Antonio substitutes himself for the alleged criminal: “If this young gentleman / Have done offense, I take the fault on me; / If you offend him, I for him defy you” (III.iv.312-14). He soothes Viola/Cesario in the thick of his own misfortune: “be of comfort” (III.iv.338). He has “redeemed” Sebastian from the tempest: “His life I gave him, and did thereto add / My love, without retention or restraint, / All his in dedication” (V.i.79, 80-82). No, Antonio's use of religious language strongly suggests that he is returning these much-abused terms to their original meaning: his actions actually bear out his description of his love. His is total sacrifice, which prompts him, completely irrationally, to give Sebastian his entire purse in case Sebastian fancies “some toy” (III.iii.44). Moreover, Antonio is even more endangered than Viola by walking the streets, yet his great love induces him to expose himself boldly, undisguised and vulnerable (V.i.82-85).

Shakespeare seems to have taken great pains to develop and set off this character who in the main source of the play is hardly attractive or essential to the plot. Barnaby Riche's captain forces himself on Silla, thus compelling her to assume a disguise for her safety.¹² Shakespeare's departures here are considerable. Antonio seems the antithesis of Riche's captain, and Viola chooses to disguise herself for vaguer reasons than Silla's, reasons that are more psychologically than physically threatening. Furthermore, Riche's story has only one captain, while Shakespeare's includes two. Shakespeare's replacement of the second captain for Silla's faithful servant Pedro suggests his desire to thrust attention on Antonio: the unnamed captain who initially helps Viola and who finally must be released from prison does nothing but echo, and thus reinforce, Antonio's history. Antonio's role as a Christlike giver of love becomes clearer yet when we contrast Riche's moral with the fuller treatment of love in Twelfth Night. Riche writes of well-deserved love. But what distinguishes Antonio's love for Sebastian is precisely that it is unearned.

Despite his affiliation with Christ, however, Antonio is not to be taken as Christ. Unlike Christ, for example, he finally expects something in return for his generosity toward Sebastian, even becoming angered at Viola/Cesario when she refuses him (III.iv). Shakespeare had explored once before the implications of unworldly, idealistic conduct in his other generous Antonio, the one in The Merchant of Venice. There such giving in some sense fails; the setting is wrong for martyrdom to thrive. The practical aspects of Venetian life cannot, apparently, be wholly reconciled with Antonio's oblivious altruism. The earlier Antonio cannot become a full member of the familial society in Act V, where, still depressed, he stands rather apart from the newly-weds. He therefore teaches us that irrational, devoted sacrifice must be compromised because people like Bassanio inevitably have to divide their love between, in his case, wife and friends; he teaches us, in other words, that human love may resemble but cannot equal the divine. But the Antonio in Twelfth Night, although as human as his predecessor, displays the other side of altruism—its ability to inspire others to give more than they otherwise would, its capacity to strip from us all barriers to love.¹³

If this Antonio were going to be able to convey such high-minded ideas without irony and yet still give Orsino cause to arrest him, then his crime would have to be handled delicately, if not ambiguously. I believe this is why mystery abounds in our knowledge of Antonio's past. Whereas several critics have called him a “pirate,” as does Orsino (V.i.69), Antonio respectfully denies that identity:

                                                                                                                        Orsino, noble sir,
Be pleas'd that I shake off these names you give me.
Antonio never yet was thief or pirate,
Though I confess, on base and ground enough,
Orsino's enemy.

(V.i.72-76)

These lines may make Antonio appear the victim of a false arrest, but in truth the presentation of conflict between Antonio and Orsino never allows us to take sides. Whenever either man advances his case against the other, each appears believable and principled. For example, Antonio implies that his quarrel with Orsino has been a matter of conscience, a struggle for justice:

SEB.
Belike you slew great number of his [Orsino's] people?
ANT.
Th' offense is not of such a bloody nature,
Albeit the quality of the time and quarrel
Might well have given us bloody argument.
It might have since been answer'd in repaying
What we took from them, which for traffic's sake
Most of our city did. Only myself stood out,
For which if I be lapsed in this place
I shall pay dear.

(III.iii.29-37)

Antonio alone, by his own account, is unwilling to compromise his standards “for traffic's sake,” as his fellow citizens have done. On the other hand, Orsino's charge of “piracy” against Antonio suggests that the captain has “stood out” against the Duke for selfish gain (l. 35). Similarly, the Duke's officer indicates that the fight between Antonio and Orsino has been bloody, even though Antonio maintains that the conflict never came to bloodshed (ll. 30-32, quoted directly above). Even the name of Orsino's nephew, for whose lost leg Orsino blames Antonio (V.i.63), remains ambiguous. Does “Titus” suggest the pagan slaughterer or Paul's friend? If the first instance were true, we would favor Antonio for subduing a menace; if we believed the second, Orsino would seem nobler, and Antonio would appear a vicious slayer of innocence. As if to compound the problem of judging ethically between these two men, Orsino himself begrudingly commends Antonio's bravery in the face of great danger:

A baubling vessel was he captain of,
For shallow draught and bulk unprizable,
With which such scathful grapple did he make
With the most noble bottom of our fleet,
That very envy, and the tongue of loss,
Cried fame and honor on him.

(V.i.54-59)

This sustained tension between the claims of Antonio and those of Orsino appears deliberate indeed. If nothing else, it exonerates Antonio from culpability enough to win him our esteem and does so without seriously damaging our opinion of Orsino, whom we must also finally respect. Thus, Antonio can serve dramatically as a model for candor and the unobstructed giving of love—for, in other words, Erasmian folly. And eventually Antonio's wise folly is reflected in numerous other characters, most notably in Feste.

III

While Antonio reveals to the characters and the audience an ideal behavior that is difficult for most of us to practice, Feste shows us the next best thing: a worldly, practical honesty. Feste is at home with money, as much of it as he can entice away from his audience, but his financial acumen never sullies his frankness.¹⁴ He thus still generously gives of himself. Although his dramatic functions are many and various, one of Feste's main purposes is to remind us that one may possess two types of folly. The two are related in that both represent innocence, yet they differ in their desirability. One, potentially dangerous—even self-destructive—is the folly aligned with Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, whose childishness is not only fun, but possibly instructive to a character like Malvolio—that is, until it turns in on the revelers. Anyone but a Puritan would applaud their trick on Malvolio, which Maria calls a “physic” (II.iii.173). Yet when the revelers go on to plot against themselves and hence divide their little society, they demonstrate that childlike insouciance can get out of hand. In the scheme against Sir Andrew, Sir Toby winds up a fool, in the worst sense. He has underestimated his competition, Sebastian, who beats the duper into the duped (V.i.175-76). The revelers' folly, then, can go either way, but it tends to cause harm.

Against this folly Feste juxtaposes another that is also childish and perhaps reckless, but nevertheless fruitful. It involves a lack of pretense and the absence of barriers to truth and love, and it characterizes especially Antonio. Feste aims to make everyone a fool of this higher quality because it is a freeing kind of foolery. It is the wise folly that the Christian Humanists sought and the folly that R. Chris Hassel defends as Pauline: “Let no man deceive himselfe. If any man among you seeme to bee wise in this world, let him bee a foole, that hee may be wise. For the wisdome of this world is foolishnesse with God.”¹⁵ R. H. Goldsmith, in his Wise Fools in Shakespeare, believes that this type of folly belongs to Lear's fool.¹⁶ But it is Feste's too, for without it the characters in Twelfth Night would never let down the walls that separate them and learn to love one another completely. Feste's jokes on Olivia therefore work to loosen her up, to “mend” her grief with the abandon of laughter (I.v.74).¹⁷ Before Olivia acquires a healthy folly, Feste ridicules her restraint in terms of unhealthy folly:

CLO.
… Good madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
OLI.
Can you do it?
CLO.
Dexteriously, good madonna.
OLI.
Make your proof.
CLO.
I must catechize you for it, madonna. Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.
OLI.
Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I'll bide your proof.
CLO.
Good madonna, why mourn'st thou?
OLI.
Good fool, for my brother's death.
CLO.
I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLI.
I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
CLO.
The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

(I.v.57-72)

Feste's “madonna,” which no other Shakespearean fool uses, communicates both the clown's affectionate respect for his mistress and the misguided religious devotion her excessive grief entails. Feste attempts to break down Olivia's stern demeanor, and he succeeds here insofar as he escapes punishment. He prepares for the following meeting with Viola/Cesario, who cracks Olivia's defenses all the more. When Olivia finally becomes “mad” for Cesario (III.iv.14), she is essentially cured of the spiritual illness that has prevented her from loving completely; her feelings for others begin to outweigh her concern for herself: with an action that parallels Antonio's defense of Viola/Cesario in III.iv, Olivia rescues Sebastian from Sir Toby's drawn sword in the next scene (IV.i.45-51). Of course, Sebastian can defend himself, as we later learn (V.i.175-76). But the point is that wise folly is transforming Olivia into one like Antonio.

It is also this folly that could save Malvolio from himself, if he could respond to his embarrassment generously. In exposing his foolishness, Feste and the revelers give him the chance to see through his false god, restraint. But Malvolio proves hypocritical: it is acceptable for him to wear gay yellow stockings in commemoration of his love, but not for anyone else to have fun. Furthermore, Malvolio is blind to his own folly. As Feste/Sir Topas implies, Malvolio will stay imprisoned in his own private “hell” until he opens himself up to the ridiculous (IV.ii.46):

CLO.
What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?
MAL.
That the soul of our grandam might happily inhabit a bird.
CLO.
What think'st thou of his opinion?
MAL.
I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
CLO.
Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness. Thou shalt hold th' opinion of Pythagoras ere I will allow of thy wits, and fear to kill a woodcock lest thou dispossess the soul of thy grandam. Fare thee well.

(IV.ii.50-60)

Perhaps not until Malvolio can indulge in such foolish play with Feste will he be capable of faith in God and in the afterlife, which require a wisely foolish lack of skepticism to endorse.

One could argue that, in prolonging his jokes on Malvolio, Feste becomes cruel—even more cruel than Sir Toby and Maria. All three carry their foolery to the extent of terrifying Malvolio, of realizing his and our darkest fantasy: that we are mad and do not know it. But, whether for guilt or for fear of his niece's displeasure (IV.ii.66-71), Sir Toby departs with Maria from the cell, while Feste lingers to plague Malvolio further (ll. 72 ff.). Still, the fool continues to derive more than mere amusement by torturing Malvolio. In his roundabout way he goes on trying to jolt Malvolio out of his rigid sanity and to instruct Malvolio: “Alas, sir, be patient” (l. 103). Symbolically, it is also Feste who brings Malvolio the instruments of his “delivery” from confinement: paper, ink, and light, suggestive of knowledge and perhaps even of salvation. If in the end Feste's attempts to save Malvolio from himself are unsuccessful, it is not because Feste has failed to show either interest in or compassion toward Malvolio's predicament. Malvolio insistently suffers from the very pride in himself and attachment to his own opinions that work against tolerant Christian love. This believer in his own superiority provides a bad example in Twelfth Night of true spirituality.

Whereas Malvolio is hardened against wise folly, Orsino and Viola are, like Olivia, more pliable. Feste hints that these characters can become wiser fools when he pokes fun at Orsino and Olivia in one breath: “I would be sorry, sir [Viola/Cesario], but the fool should be as oft with your master as with my mistress” (III.i.39-41). Feste's ambiguous line can make either of two statements. First, if “should” is taken to mean “is,” then Feste says that Olivia and Orsino are too often fools, in the undesirable sense of folly. But second, if “should” means “ought to,” the line can mean that Olivia and Orsino should be wise fools more often. Here again, Feste brings the two kinds of folly into play: until later, Olivia and Orsino are wrong-headed fools and, as Feste implies, could benefit from positive, wise folly.

Viola too becomes involved with both types of folly. When her disguise embroils her in the complicated love relationship with Olivia, she indirectly admits to her unfortunate lack of foresight: “now I am your fool” (III.i.144). She has earlier recognized the potential danger of pretense: “Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness / Wherein the pregnant enemy does much” (II.ii.27-28). The threat posed by her unmasking, however, is greater to her than the fear of hurting Olivia. Orsino's love carries a high price. Are we to praise Viola for paying it when it could affect another so adversely? I think not. Without accusing her, I think we need to question her, to look closely at her progress through the play.¹⁸ Why, for instance, does Feste, who strives to instill folly in the characters, express a dislike for her?: “… in my conscience, sir, I do not care for you. If that be to care for nothing, sir, I would it would make you invisible” (III.i.28-30). Viola takes his comment in stride, so perhaps he delivers it inoffensively. Yet it is possible that Feste senses barriers around Viola which, like her disguise, inhibit her love and her honesty as much as Olivia's grief has emotionally crippled her.¹⁹ It is also possible, if Feste is somehow criticizing Viola's evasiveness, that Viola either ignores him or misses the point. For Viola shows us, in other situations, that she would rather remain safe behind her disguise than risk exposing her true self and losing Orsino. She may ultimately share Olivia's ability to become changed by folly, but she resists that change far longer and more tenaciously than her equally love-stricken counterpart.

IV

Viola's characterization throughout Twelfth Night reveals that the play concerns itself fundamentally with her moral growth. Shakespeare continually plays Viola off the other characters to illustrate how far she has come and how much farther she has to go. Initially, she has all the makings of an Antonio. She generously rewards first the sea captain and then Feste (I.ii.18, III.i.43), and she lashes out at ingratitude when Antonio accuses her of it (III.iv.354-57). Her willingness to woo another woman for the man she loves also indicates her magnanimity.²⁰

Yet she often appears self-absorbed. Nowhere is this trait clearer than when she offers Antonio only half her coffer (III.iv.345-47). Next to the total altruism that Antonio showed Sebastian in the preceding scene (III.iii.38), Viola's reserve seems downright stingy. Granted, Viola is not rich; nor does she even know Antonio. Her giving anything at all under these circumstances could thus be admired. But the contrast between the two characters is evident: Viola is willing to go far for someone else, but only so far.²¹ Similarly, Viola has good reason in III.iv to be stunned by the sudden possibility that Sebastian may yet live and thus to ignore Antonio's arrest; but Antonio, having intervened to save her life, surely deserves more attention from Viola/Cesario than she gives. Even if Viola exits at the close of this scene in pursuit of Antonio and the officers, she apparently does so not to aid Antonio but to discover more about Sebastian's history.

This key episode in which Viola and Antonio are contrasted reveals the major obstacle that Viola must surmount before she can grow to love completely: fear of losing control. That she loves both her brother and her master is obvious to us, but a great deal of the potential and actual destructiveness in Twelfth Night arises from Viola's refusal to expose herself openly to others—to give herself away. She is consistently associated with walls—barriers to love—throughout the play. Her disguise becomes an emblem of her and others' fear: many such walls appear in the play and must be let down or broken through before genuine love can be enjoyed. Orsino uses clichéd love language to put a safe distance between himself and Olivia (e.g., I.i); Viola refers to the hypocrisy of most people, who hide their wickedness behind the “beauteous wall” of appearance (I.ii.48); Viola herself attempts to use language like Orsino's in wooing Olivia and in protecting herself, until she finds it will not shield her well (e.g., II.ii); Olivia hides in her house and behind her wit and her veil (II.ii, etc.). The spirit of Epiphany, represented by Antonio's willingness to manifest his true self for the sake of another, is stifled behind these barriers.

Viola's brilliant repartee with Feste demonstrates her capacity for folly, for letting go and enjoying another's company (III.i.1-59). Admiring his wit, she expresses appreciation for its wisdom and thus signals her own association with Christlike folly and her own understanding that folly comes in two forms: “For folly that he wisely shows is fit, / But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit” (III.i.67-68). But when Feste cuts gently at Orsino's folly (ll. 39-41), Viola resists hearing more: “Nay, and thou pass upon me, I'll no more with thee” (ll. 42-43). Viola here seems reluctant to acknowledge the value of Feste's remarks. For a long time she appears unable either to admit that Orsino's attraction to Olivia is not genuine love or to deal directly with her feelings for Orsino. Her reaction to Feste's song in II.iv exemplifies the poor judgment that results from her infatuation. “Come away, come away, death” has got to be some of the most morbid verse ever set to music, as Feste kindly suggests to Orsino (II.iv.73-78), and the music that accompanies it would be anything but cheering. But Viola identifies with its gloom: “It gives a very echo to the seat / Where Love is thron'd” (II.iv.21-22). Viola's exaggerated sympathy for Orsino's pain mirrors his self-indulgence.

In its irrationality, Viola's love for Orsino resembles Antonio's love for Sebastian and Olivia's for Viola/Cesario. It is potentially good folly. But enclosed within her, it waxes overly melancholic. When she can express it in even veiled language, as she does in II.iv, it regains some of its health:

VIO.
My father had a daughter lov'd a man
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.
DUKE.
                                                                                                    And what's her history?
VIO.
A blank, my lord; she never told her love,
But let concealment like a worm i' th' bud
Feed on her damask cheek; she pin'd in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sate like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

(ll. 107-15)

Perhaps because this passage demands that Viola objectify her feelings, it is less self-pitying than her attraction to Feste's song. Furthermore, Viola's hidden love at least eventually permits her to instruct Orsino:

VIO.
But if she [Olivia] cannot love you, sir?
DUKE.
I cannot be so answer'd.
VIO.
                                                                                                    Sooth, but you must.

(II.iv.87-88)

Yet Viola herself realizes that secret longings fester within, “like a worm i' th' bud.” The self must be honestly exposed to survive; Viola must reveal her inner self to become fully human.

Another of Viola's potential virtues emerges as she is compared and contrasted with Malvolio. In much the same way that Malvolio seeks to unravel the letter he finds in II.v, Viola tries to read the significance of the allegedly returned ring in II.ii. The concept linking the two scenes is interpretation. On this score Viola obviously does much better than Malvolio. Her vision is not so dreamy-eyed as to obscure the true meaning of receiving the ring, whereas poor Malvolio's hopes absolutely blind him to the facts. Viola's visionary quality—composed of a clear-sightedness like Feste's and a power like Antonio's to perceive how others feel—will guide her through the snarls to come. Yet on this point too she fudges, when she thrusts all responsibility onto an external force: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t' untie” (II.ii.40-41). Notwithstanding the partial truth of this statement, Viola will sooner or later have to participate in shaping her own life. Time can and does help, but it requires a cooperation from her, a total commitment of herself to love.

Whether or not Viola learns how to make such an investment directly from Antonio, the sea captain's dramatic purpose is to provide such an example, and Viola comes to reflect his behavior. The turning point for her, when all the potentially fine qualities we have seen in her come together, is also the heart of the play. It comes in her answer to Orsino's angry threat on her life:

I'll sacrifice the lamb that I do love,
To spite a raven's heart within a dove.

(V.i.130-31)

The Christian implications of the “sacrificial lamb” ought to ring clear, and Viola's sudden “willingness” to give not just some, but all, endows her with new virtue:

And I most jocund, apt, and willingly,
To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.

(ll. 132-33)

Like Antonio, who has earlier offered to protect her with his life (III.iv.312-14), Viola now substitutes herself for Olivia, in order to give Orsino “rest.” She gladly takes upon herself the punishment through which Orsino would “spite” another. Here lies the Epiphany in Twelfth Night, where the meaning of Christ's birth, His sacrifice for humanity, manifests itself in the actions of human beings. Viola's commitment of her life to love is the wisest folly she can pursue. To dismiss all barriers to love, to disregard even the welfare of one's physical being, is divine.

Viola's altruistic attitude toward love, which alludes to a Christian ideal, permits spiritual love and romantic love to be linked in Twelfth Night. Ultimately, we are not shown a world in which different types of love—say, physical and non-physical—are qualitatively different or are opposed. Rather, Christian love, as epitomized in Antonio, works itself into the worldliest of relationships through the four lovers, principally Viola, as well as through Feste. Thus, Christian love can inform romantic love, and the two comic traditions that shape the play—the romantic and the serious—are joined compatibly as Viola grows to become more like Antonio. Significantly, in this final scene Olivia also grows to accept Viola/Cesario as a “sister” and Orsino as her brother (ll. 326, 317). The good folly that is well on its way to triumphing over all is not limited to romantic love, but leads to general good will and fellowship.

Appropriately, after Viola's declaration of devotion to Orsino, the majority of the characters are in some respect set free. Viola's self-sacrifice is not the single twist in the plot that accounts for every subsequent revelation: many other actions, like Sebastian's entrance (l. 208), intervene before Viola's true identity is discovered. But Viola's new openness to love sets a tone early in the scene for the series of manifestations and apparent miracles to follow. The twins are reunited; the four lovers are rightly matched; the sea captain who has possession of Viola's clothes is “enlarged” (l. 278); and Malvolio is “deliver'd” (l. 315), though that does not guarantee his freedom, which only he can claim for himself. Even Fabian, caught up in the “wonder” of “this present hour,” freely confesses the joke on Malvolio and tries to ease the tension between the revelers and the steward (ll. 355-68). “Golden time” is ripe for love like Antonio's.

But the play's problematic nature persists to the end, modifying and augmenting the harmonious resolution. For instance, what of Antonio? Are we to assume that Orsino will also set him free? It seems rather that the question of Antonio's future, like so many other questions at the closing, is left dangling for a reason. Interestingly, the other salient loose end here is that Viola has still not removed her disguise by the time Twelfth Night is finished. These two details do more than blur the play's resolution, as do questions about whether Malvolio will repair his ruined pride and whether Maria will help curb her new husband's former excesses. Most importantly, these unresolved elements involve the audience's sense of responsibility in determining their own future. Indeed, Act V would not challenge us morally if it clearly and simply showed that all ended well. Twelfth Night finally asks us whether we will make all well by divesting ourselves of the walls around us that shut out love like Antonio's and keep it imprisoned. Will we embrace the spirit of Epiphany, which shapes the play throughout, and thus free Christian love in our own world? By agreeing to, we will, in effect, liberate Antonio and change as radically as if we moved, along with Viola, from male to female. When Twelfth Night closes, it has already “pleased” us, as Feste promises (V.i.408). If it is also going to teach us when the “play is done” (l. 407), then we must respond to it by unveiling.

Notes

1. G. Blakemore Evans, gen. ed., The Riverside Shakespeare (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), Twelfth Night, III.i.121-22. All subsequent references are to this edition.

2. Evans, The Riverside Shakespeare, As You Like It, IV.iii.156 ff.

3. Pepys recorded this comment in his Diary on Twelfth Day, 6 January 1633.

4. Anne Barton, Introduction to Twelfth Night in The Riverside Shakespeare, p. 404.

5. Barton, p. 403.

6. Barbara K. Lewalski, “Thematic Patterns in Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare Studies, I (1965), 169.

7. John Hollander, “Twelfth Night and the Morality of Indulgence,” 1959; rpt. in Walter N. King, ed., Twentieth Century Interpretations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 85-86.

8. “Epiphany²,” OED.

9. The question of whether Twelfth Night alludes to Christian concerns contributes to a larger debate about the play's essential nature and tone. Striding the romantic comedies on one end and the problem plays on the other, Twelfth Night reflects shades of both. Most critics have responded to this confusion by singling out either the romantic or the problematic strands and ignoring the rest. Hence, readings of the play as either light or serious (even dark) abound. By far the greater number of these interpretations settle in the romantic camp. One characteristic of this group is their denial of the play's titular reference to Christian concepts.

   As I have implied, however, there are exceptions. In addition to those I mention in my text, Richard Henze explores the juxtaposition between apparently secular and festive elements of Twelfth Night and the play's Christian allusions in “Twelfth Night: Free Disposition on the Sea of Love,” The Sewanee Review, 83 (1975), 267-83. But Henze's chief concern, in contrast with Hollander's, is the very confusion that this mingling of traits produces in the audience. Nor does Henze feel that the play's variety of interpretations can be reconciled, though he develops an entire reading of the work based on doing justice to its several faces: “I should like to propose a solution to this puzzle of interpretations: that Twelfth Night is a play about opposites and that each of [its possible interpretations] tends to treat just one pair of opposites” (p. 267). While I find Henze's discussion stimulating, I shall argue that the “opposites” he identifies—between the religious and the secular—are meant less to conflict than to enrich each other.

   For yet another, fascinating study of how light/romantic and serious/satirical elements complement each other in Twelfth Night, see Ralph Berry, “Twelfth Night: The Experience of the Audience,” Shakespeare Survey, 34 (1981), 111-19. Berry, however, does not address Christian elements in the play.

10. R. Chris Hassel, Jr., Faith and Folly in Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies (Athens, GA: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1980).

11. Lewalski, pp. 176-78.

12. Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1958), II, 348-50.

13. Two critics have recently addressed the generosity of Twelfth Night's Antonio, each in ways unique from mine and from each other, yet in ways equally provocative. Camille Wells Slights, “The Principle of Recompense in Twelfth Night,” Modern Language Review, 77 (1982), 537-46, argues that the play's ideal of love is not altruism, but reciprocated love. Marilyn French, Shakespeare's Division of Experience (New York: Summit Books, 1981), believes that because Antonio loves so purely and passionately, he is, in the play's context, a “subversive,” a “misfit,” a “starving dispossessed” (pp. 118-20).

14. Robert Hillis Goldsmith, in Wise Fools in Shakespeare (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1955), has observed that, in this regard, Feste belongs to both the romantic plot and the subplot. He can thus mediate between the two (see especially ch. iv).

15. R. Chris Hassel, Jr., “Saint Paul and Shakespeare's Romantic Comedies,” Thought, 46 (1971), passim; 1 Cor. iii.18-19, as quoted from the Geneva Bible (London: Robert Barker, Printer to the King, 1615).

16. Goldsmith, Wise Fools. See especially ch. iv.

17. For a point similar to mine about Feste's effect on Olivia, see Hassel, Faith and Folly, p. 154.

18. Richard A. Levin carries this point to what seems to me an unsubstantiated extreme. In “Viola: Dr. Johnson's ‘Excellent Schemer,’” Durham University Journal, 71 (1979), 213-22, Levin not only accuses Viola of self-centered behavior; he sees her as a conniver and the whole play as covered with ironically romantic “glitter” (p. 222).

19. C. L. Barber, in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy (1959; rpt. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1972), has also thought about this detail of Feste's distaste. But Barber suggests that Feste does not like Viola because in their exchange “he finds himself beaten at his own game” (p. 254).

20. A few critics have studied Viola's maturation in psycho-sexual terms. Helen Moglen, who seems to me the best at this approach, sees Viola's disguise as a cocoon within which she can experiment in a “homoerotic relationship” before she is ready to engage in a mature union with Orsino. Such experimentation, of course, centers on Viola's wooing of Oliva in I.v and III.i. Finally, the experimentation leads to a society that can attain “personal freedom,” as well as accept “responsibility.” Moglen's Freudian angle on Viola's growth is important and enlightening, yet it assumes a great deal about the text. In addition, it arrives at moral conclusions less by moral observation than by scientific inquiry. To assess how Viola's role meshes with that of Christian Epiphany, one needs to observe not so much her psychological growth as her moral development. This done, one perceives other changes in her character that have unique bearing on the play's meaning. See “Disguise and Development: The Self and Society in Twelfth Night,” Literature and Psychology, 23 (1973), 13-20. For similar approaches to disguise and maturation in the play, see J. Dennis Huston, “‘When I Came to Man's Estate’: Twelfth Night and Problems of Identity,” Modern Language Quarterly, 33 (1972), 274-88; Nancy K. Hayles, “Sexual Disguise in As You Like It and Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare Survey, 32 (1979), 63-72; and Robert Kimbrough, “Androgyny Seen Through Shakespeare's Disguise,” Shakespeare Quarterly, 33 (1982), 17-33.

21. Elizabeth M. Yearling, “Language, Theme, and Character in Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare Survey, 35 (1982), 79-86, vividly describes Viola's method of refusing Antonio in III.iv.341-47:

    Viola's [offer of money to Antonio] is a carefully thought-out loan to a helpful but puzzling stranger. She moves slowly towards the offer. “I'll lend” is preceded by a series of subordinate clauses and phrases outlining her reasons and stressing her poverty. “My having is not much” repeats the content of the line before, and adds to our impression that Viola feels an uncomfortable need to justify herself.

    (p. 82; emphasis added)

    Yearling's context here is entirely different from mine, yet she aptly makes my point about Viola's extreme caution in giving, as contrasted with Antonio's boundless, irrational charity.