Because disguise and mistaken identity are a central theme in many of Shakespeare's comedies, so is gender ambiguity, many female characters disguising as men. The fact that young male actors play these characters, making a boy dressed as a woman dressed as a boy, further increases this ambiguity. This ambiguity then extends from gender to sexuality in Twelfth Night with a real love triangle between Orsino, Olivia and Viola (or Cesario as Olivia knows her). This love triangle could be completely heterosexual, if one interprets Olivia's character as being only attracted to "Cesario" as a man, could be simply bisexual, or could be "sexually fluid", defying easy categorization and reveling in the complexities of androgyny. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay When discussing sexuality in a Shakespeare play, it should be noted that the concepts of sexuality were different from the modern perception of labels strict and specific identities for gender. and sexuality. Casey Charles sums up the Renaissance perspective perfectly in his article "Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night," arguing that Shakespeare's plays, including Twelfth Night, were written in "a modern culture in which the categories of homo- and bisexuality were neither fixed nor associated. with identity” (121). This lack of fixed sexual and gender identities in this era means that it would be pointless to retroactively apply such labels to characters or even historical figures of the era, as they would not have been conceived or designed themselves as such. However, we can still and should try to categorize the characters' behavior and how it relates to their contemporary attitudes about gender and sex. In fact, there are people like Lorna Hutson who says in her article "You Can't Be Fooled: Rhetoric and the Body in Twelfth Night" that it is a mistake to consider "how characters negotiate their individual desires in plays as if they were real people and not even partial figures of a persuasive speech or agents of a conspiracy” (146). Analyzing the sexual behaviors of the characters is important in analyzing the perspective of the play as a whole, because none of their actions are incidental to the plot and therefore the message of the play. Besides the absence of the concept of sexuality as identity in the Elizabethan era, another important attitude towards sexual behavior and gender is illustrated in Plato's Symposium. As someone educated during the Renaissance, Shakespeare would have been very familiar with both the original classical writings and the perspectives they dispersed throughout society. In his article "'Maid and Man' in Twelfth Night", William WE Slights describes the Symposium fable in which humans originally had two faces, four arms and four legs, but were separated by the gods and left to die. search for their other half. This fable explains the different possible sexual orientations, as some of these original humans were completely masculine (children of the sun), completely feminine (children of the earth), or androgynous (children of the moon), being half male and half female (331 ). -332). The detail that androgynous humans were those who represented heterosexual union illustrates a difference from the modern perspective that associates gender ambiguity with homosexuality. Because of their preoccupation with classical ideals, Renaissance people alsoadopted the perspective illustrated in Symposium in which androgyny is associated with heterosexual unions, meaning that a character's androgyny would not be linked to homosexual behavior, but instead could be seen as representing a perfect heterosexual union. In Twelfth Night, the initial Elizabethan audience would therefore not necessarily have associated Viola's cross-dressing with lesbian behavior. As Jessica Tvordi argues in her essay “FemaleAlliance and the Construction of Homoeroticism in As You Like It and Twelfth Night,” “The activities of female transvestites, however, tend to highlight the potential of male characters – As You Like It in Orlando and Orsino in Twelfth Night, for example – to cross erotic boundaries. through their interactions with the figure of the transvestite rather than illuminating debates on the representation of female sexuality” (115). Tvordi's argument therefore is that female cross-dressing in Shakespeare's plays is not about women's sexuality but rather an opportunity for male characters to explore their own sexuality. However, it could be argued that this is a sexist interpretation that asserts that female sexuality no longer matters or at least is only subservient to male sexuality once male sexuality is also present. Viola in fact asserts her own sexuality, particularly in her interactions with Olivia, completely removed from the context of male sexuality. Charles says: Limiting the consequences of theatrical cross-dressing to the evocation of male homoeroticism ignores the ambiguities created by cross-dressing and reestablishes the restriction of gender binarism in the discussion of homoeroticism. Women were present at the Globe, and there is no reason to ignore female homoeroticism in the context of the disruptions explored by cross-dressing. (132) Just because male homoeroticism is an aspect of the sexual ambiguity presented by Viola's cross-dressing does not mean that the homoerotic behaviors between Viola and Olivia cannot also be an aspect of it. Viola's actions while cross-dressing can be further questioned, particularly as to whether her actions while dressed as a man actually called into question her role as a woman. While Tvordi and even Charles claim that Viola “does not use her disguise to gain power, but only to secure her position as a devoted wife. She never really questions the patriarchy” (Charles 135), I would say that Viola’s actions are subversive. For example, in Act I, scene v, when she is courting Olivia for Orsino and improvises instead of reciting what Orsino wrote. In this scene, Viola has a poem by Orsino to read to Olivia that follows the traditional masculine model that refers to the female subject of the poem as subject only to the actions of the male speaker, not her own desires. Olivia asks Viola about her own feelings, Viola improvises, recognizing Olivia's desires and by extension her own. In "Glimpsing a 'Lesbian' Poetics in Twelfth Night," Jami Ake describes this moment as a rupture "from Petrarchan conventions [that] demand...female silence" (379). This scene provides an opportunity for the normal female subjects of poetry to speak for themselves and their desires. Ake notes that Viola's speech is particularly interesting in that she, "in imaginatively situating herself as Olivia's courtesan, conceives of herself not as a mere substitute for the Duke, but as loving...with the same kind of 'erotic intensity that Orsino' (380). . This is the scene in which Olivia falls in love with Viola as Cesario and in her essay "On Not Being..