Identity in Twelfth Night

What is perhaps most interesting about this comedy of mistaken identity is how identity seems to work in two, seeming incompatible ways. First, there is the element of self-creation. After a ship-wreck, or a sort of rebirth out of the waters, Viola is able to become Cesario. She is entirely capable of convincing Olivia and Orisno that she is a man, which is easily achieved. What complicates it is the second aspect of identity, that is, how identity is very often determined by one's relations to other people, to their society. Viola's character takes on both masculine and feminine qualities at once when she feels woman's love for the Duke Orsino, but then is perceived and loved as a man by Olivia. Finally, when she is revealed to be a woman, she cannot go and retrieve her female clothes so easily and must wait for others to lead her to the clothes, suggesting that without her woman's clothing, she is still in this androgynous area where she can be "created" based on how others perceive her. A simpler example of this would be how Olivia plays to the role of the "mourner" simply because the circumstances of her life have provided this identity for her.
This problem with identity most certainly speaks to the idea of metatheatrics. Boys dress up as women, and while the audience is capable of understanding this, it is in the actor's relation to the script, to the other actors, to the entire context of the theatre itself, that they can become these women.

Rachel Humphrey