Twelfth Night and All's Well That End's Well

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and All’s Well That Ends Well, the main character takes on male attributes. In All’s Well, Helen becomes the pursuer, while Bertram takes on the role usually given to women, of the pursued. In Twelfth Night, Viola disguises herself as a man entirely and encounters all sorts of problems with her disguise. Both Helen and Viola undergo a change in status that generates comic effect. Helen changes from the passive romantic to the active pursuer while Viola changes her status as a woman to that of a man. Both Twelfth Night and All’s Well also include character’s whose status is reduced to those of fools. In Twelfth Night, Malvolio’s status changes to that of a fool due to a forged love letter that plays on his desire for an upward change in status. In All’s Well Paroles is reduced to what his status has in fact been all along, that of a braggart, his pretended status of a heroic soldier is stripped away during the course of the play. Both plays include various changes in both social and emotional status which can cause much hilarity as confusion, humiliation and unrequited love reign.

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night the main plot revolves around a character’s change in status from her true status as a woman to an assumed status of a boy. Viola turns into Cesario and experiences the freedom a man’s status brings him as compared to “the constraints and the vulnerability of the feminine.” The other character’s belief that her true status is that of a man is the main generator of comic effect. Viola falls in love with Duke Orsino who has taken her under his wing as a pageboy. Viola’s unspoken love for Orsino, who believes Viola a boy, gives rise to many comedic double meanings and asides. Viola is asked by Orsino to take his suit to Olivia. Viola is loath to woo another for the man she loves and in an aside to the audience comments, “Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.” Later, Cesario notices that his pageboy is showing the symptoms