YMMV / Twelfth Night

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just pick up two different editions and read any introductions.
  • Feste gets a lot of this. His generally witty lines leave the majority of viewers genuinely amused and enjoying him as comic relief, but his somewhat bittersweet closing song ("the rain, it raineth every day" - see The Cover Changes the Meaning, on the main page) make others view him as a subtly tragic Sad Clown. Finally, the ludicrous extent of his Disproportionate Retribution (again, see the main page) makes others argue he is a Monster Clown with total sociopathy, willing to unmake any character as thoroughly as he did poor Malvolio if given half a chance to get away with it.
  • Directing a production of Twelfth Night takes on an extra dimension if you're familiar with Alan Gordon's excellent Fools' Guild mysteries, to wit: Feste is a secret agent, engineered the twins' "shipwreck" in order to stabilise the political situation in Illyria, and falls in love with Viola to the extent that after his assignment's success, he spends a lot of the rest of his life trying to drink away the heartache. Oh, and Malvolio is apparently working for Saladin. Introducing these concepts to the actors playing these roles doesn't remotely translate to the audience, but is a hell of a lot of fun.
  • The respective sexual identities of Orsino, Olivia, and Viola are very up in the air, considering that Orsino falls in love with his page "boy" and Olivia falls in love with a woman that she thinks is a eunuch. And unlike Rosalind in As You Like It, once outed Viola is never seen again on-stage in her woman's weeds (although modern productions may have her come out in a dress for the curtain call).
  • Malvolio could be cast or played as being Olivia's own age, or an older but still handsome fellow, or as a man way past his prime but still daydreaming that the Countess will fall for him. Alternatively, the 2020 National Theatre production cast the actress Tamsin Greig as a gender-swapped Malvolia, presenting her as a closeted lesbian.
  • Malvolio's humiliation can be played as being something he deserves for being officious and arrogant, but contemporary productions have often played it as a more disturbing form of psychological torment. This also changes the tenor of the finale—is his final line, "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!", an amusingly impotent threat, or a psychologically broken man trying to recoup what's left of his dignity? The aforementioned National Theatre version with a woman playing Malvolio also gives her experiences a disturbing edge of homophobia, as she gets publicly outed as a means of humiliating her.
  • Many productions imply that Feste knows Viola is actually a girl, and uses lines such as — "Now Jove, in his next commodity of hair, send thee a beard" — in order to tease and bait her. (They did this in the 1996 film, although Feste had an unfair advantage there, since he saw the survivors of the shipwreck getting washed up on the shore.)
  • With just a handful of minor cuts, a case can be made for Viola being trans or nonbinary.
  • Is Antonio gay, or is his "love" for Sebastian platonic? It's all up to the individual production.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Feste, for being hilariously snide, snarky, and acting as the smartest person in the show. He also scores bonus points for the songs.
  • Andrew is also rather popular, with his cheerful stupidity both making him one of the show’s funniest and saddest characters.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: More cynical eyes can view the ending as this. Yes, Viola and Orsino are (probably) happy, all well and good, but what about everyone else? Consider:
  • Olivia's married to Sebastian simply because she mistook him for his twin sister, who's the person she actually fell in love with. Plus it can be argued that he wed her under false pretences since he knew that she believed him to be someone else, but went along with it anyway — not a great foundation on which to build a life together.
  • Sir Toby has a serious head wound and might well be cast out by Olivia for everything that he's done to Malvolio; same for Maria on that last part. It seems they may live out the phrase "Marry in haste, repent at leisure." Fabian is especially likely to be subjected to that or worse punishment given he doesn't have the benefit of being related to his mistress like them.
  • Sir Andrew's been violently rejected by someone he honestly believed was his friend and trying to help him.
  • We're never told what's going to happen to Antonio, who only got caught because he loved Sebastian so much (in the 1996 version Orsino frees him, but he goes away on his own, bereft).
  • Malvolio is traumatized, utterly humiliated and storms out swearing revenge on everybody.
  • And Feste even sings a melancholy song about the rain raining every day. Hardly cheerful stuff.
    • The 2017/2018 production at the Royal Shakespeare Company particularly highlighted this, with no one in the two main couples really happy; Olivia clearly still loves Viola and isn't sure what to make of Sebastian, Viola is uncertain about Orsino's feelings for her (given that he mistook Sebastian for her when making his proposal) and Sebastian is mourning the loss of Antonio and apprehensive about this relationship he's suddenly found himself in. Additionally, it's implied that Feste was in love with Olivia too and is distraught at seeing her marry someone else, even if he knew a relationship with her could never possibly happen.
• Fanon: Most readers treat it as a given that Feste knows Viola is a girl, though this is only hinted at in the text itself. (Namely: when Feste first meets Sebastian he immediately realizes something strange is going on, and says "Nothing that is so is so." All the other characters, meanwhile, just assume Sebastian and Cesario are the same person until they finally end up in the same room.)
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Viola/Olivia has become this in recent years, overshadowing the canon Orsino/Viola.
• Ho Yay: Some more Freudian interpretations of the play suggest it's actually intended to be a major theme.
  • It's particularly blazing between Antonio and Sebastian, to the point it's near impossible for modern audiences to see Antonio as anything other than gay.
  Antonio: *to Sebastian* If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.
  • Orsino freely admits he loves 'Cesario' even as he's planning to kill 'him' as punishment for betraying 'his' master with Olivia, and as soon as he learns Viola's true identity and gender he almost immediately proposes marriage.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Malvolio, hands down. He may be an incredibly snooty jerk, but he never actually does anything wrong before he's subjected to a cruel prank. He's already sympathetic when Maria plots to use his genuine feelings for Olivia against him, but then Toby's crew decide humiliating him in front of the woman he loves and works for wasn't enough, and imprison him. And not only that, but while he's locked up they play manipulative mind games on him. It says something that even after he's pledged revenge, Olivia admits they went too far in humiliating him.
  • Andrew is an oaf who thinks far too highly of himself, but Sir Toby constantly takes advantage of his trust, draining him of his money and humiliating him for fun. At the end, Andrew tries to help Toby only to be violently rejected and insulted in front of everyone, causing him to leave without saying another word. There's also his single mention of being "adored once". We never get any expansion, but it can be played as a surpassingly somber moment, hinting at a sadness beneath his otherwise unassumingly buffoonish demeanor.
  • Both of these characters’ treatments are Played for Laughs, but any good production will show their respective endings in a very sympathetic light.
• Les Yay: Viola and Olivia. Granted, Olivia doesn't know Viola's a woman, but still. A few of Viola's lines could imply she has feelings for Olivia as well — and she, unlike Olivia, knows perfectly well that they're both women.
• LGBT Fanbase: All of Shakespeare's work has a bit of one, but this play gets it a lot. The Les Yay, Ho Yay, crossdressing, blurry gender lines, and potential campiness that most productions play up tends to help.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This is widely known as the play where a young boy plays a girl who dresses up as a man, falls in love with her master but the master's adored falls in love with "him" instead, who is also played by a man.
  • This play is the source of the aphorism "Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."
• Narm: Critics have pointed out that in Viola and Sebastian's reunion scene, the whole dialogue of "My father had a mole upon his brow" feels really artificial and disrupts what is otherwise a very honest scene.
• One True Threesome: A lot of readers ship Viola/Orsino/Olivia, pointing out that it would solve a lot of problems.
• Ron the Death Eater: There are some who refer to Malvolio as the show’s villain. This is despite him not really doing anything wrong outside of being a smarmy, uptight jerk. If anything, his antagonist Sir Toby is the most villainous character, as he pettily goes out of his way to harass and humiliate several characters for the sake of fun. Malvolio’s not a Nice Guy, but his crimes (if you could even call them that) are much lesser in comparison.
• Signature Scene: Malvolio coming to woo Olivia. Cross gartered in his yellow stockings.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Malvolio's pledge of vengeance at the end is a great Sequel Hook. One wonders why Shakespeare didn't run with it?
• Values Dissonance: Malvolio is described as being a Puritan. At the time of the play's creation and first performance, Puritanism hadn't yet been strictly defined (it was used as an insult for a number of extreme Protestant sects) but they were in general firmly against The Wicked Stage and condemned it as akin to prostitution (during Oliver Cromwell's rule, theatre was outlawed entirely and the Globe pulled down). When Maria calls Malvolio a Puritan, Shakespeare's audience would have heard "the enemy of our company's way of life, and you our audience for choosing to come here and watch us perform." That subtext is absent today, so modern audiences perceive him as an uptight but harmless buffoon who doesn't deserve what's done to him.
• The Woobie:
  • Antonio, arguably. His love for Sebastian gets him arrested, and he believes that his companion has rejected him. Then in the end, he is left alone as Sebastian marries Olivia. It's at least common in productions for him to be freed at the end, though that doesn't necessarily change his ending to a happy one.
  • Viola could also be seen is this. The poor girl ends up shipwrecked, her beloved brother presumed dead, and ends up going undercover just to get a job. Then she falls in love with her employer, who thinks she's a man, and is in love with someone else. Still, she helps him woo his beloved, because she wants him to be happy, even if it's not with her. Then his beloved falls in love with her, and because of all the Mistaken Identity nonsense, he ends up thinking Viola deliberately stole her away. Luckily, this is a comedy, not a tragedy, so everything turns out okay for her; she winds up marrying the guy she loves and her brother turns out to be all right. But she had a hell of a time before the curtain falls!
  • Olivia, too. Her father and brother are both dead, and she's deeply in mourning, her only source of amusement coming from Feste and Maria. Despite her grieving for her brother, Orsino and Andrew will not leave her alone. Then, she meets a nice "guy" who she becomes attracted to, and decides to open her heart again — not knowing the guy is a girl that's in love with someone else. Seriously, no wonder she was so grouchy at the start of the story! Again, though, everything turns out okay. (Probably.)

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