There is no great mystery in a plot centering on drag performances opening up discussion on gender and sexuality. But when that discussion has continued for more than four hundred years, perhaps there is reason to take another look. While it’s obvious that the discussion surrounding Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night would be utterly incomplete without some consideration of these themes, the fact that the debate rages on today is a testament to the nuanced nature of the play. Disentangling these themes from the myriad threads that intersect and overlap throughout the play can be overwhelming. The complexity that exists in the gendered underpinnings of the relationships between Viola, Olivia, and Orsino is too great a task for a simple analysis. Fortunately, however, the problematization of gender and sexuality that Twelfth Night makes apparent converges on a seemingly minor character: Antonio. By cashing in on a shared cultural currency on the symbolic meanings of piracy, Shakespeare solidifies for Renaissance playgoers an intimacy between Antonio and Sebastian less superficial than any alternatives presented in the play, thereby making a case for the possibilities available outside of the heterosexual paradigm.
One does not need to look far beyond the surface of Twelfth Night to begin to recognize another surface: the ocean’s. The text is rife with ocean imagery from the very beginning. The play’s second act opens after a shipwreck with the supposed death of Sebastian, Viola’s brother. This is the event that allows for the rest of the play to follow. Without this turning point, there is no masquerade, there is no twelfth night. The shipwreck sets the stage for the split between the siblings—and for Viola’s transformation into Cesario. The importance of the play’s connection to the ocean is underscored by a number of references comparing ocean water to tears. For instance, Sebastian says of Viola that “she is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more”. These moments in the play work to highlight the significance of this force while simultaneously constructing it as one that evokes grief and tragedy.
The construction of the ocean as a source of tragedy and violence, then, neatly aligns with a widely-recognizable nautical character trope: the pirate. The modern pirate stereotype—once you get past the peg-leg and parrot—is not a huge leap from what would have been evoked in the Renaissance imagination. Pirates embodied an extreme performance of brutal and savage masculinity. According to Burg, they “cultivated the masculine attributes of physical toughness, courage in combat, endurance, and comradeship”. Parallel to Twelfth Night’s imagining of the ocean, this hyper-masculine ideal was itself a source of tragedy and violence.
Shakespeare’s use of destructive ocean imagery allows the recognizable trope of the pirate to take shape in the margins of the story, which ultimately allows the audience to make an assumption about Antonio’s background. Midway through the play, while explaining to Sebastian why he cannot see the town’s attractions with him, Antonio says “Once in a sea-fight ‘gainst the Count his galleys / I did some service, of such note indeed / That were I ta’en here it would scarce be answered”. He goes on to say that the “service” he speaks of is not a murderous one, but rather one of thievery. With the aforementioned violent ocean imagery present in the undercurrent of the narrative, this description of a thieving sea-dweller allows for little interpretation but of that of the pirate. Shakespeare allows this to remain the audience’s impression of Antonio until the very last scene, in which he proclaims “Antonio never yet was thief or pirate”. The question then remains: why wait? If Antonio’s identification with the culture of piracy was narratively insignificant, why postpone this point of clarification til the end? Unless, of course, it was anything but insignificant.
By strategically identifying Antonio with piracy through violent ocean imagery and restricted background information, Shakespeare was able to take advantage of a shared cultural currency on the symbolic meanings of piracy. Pirate ships were, for the most part, exclusively sites of homosocial relations. While some may be inclined to believe that—in a world dominated by the hyper-masculine—this would have led to violence over whatever available women existed, all remaining historical evidence points to the contrary. The reputation pirates get for habitually raping the women they met on their journeys is, at least in the case of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pirates, largely unfounded beyond a few notable exceptions to the rule. From what remaining documentation and court transcripts exist to contextualize the lives of pirates, one thing is rather clear—a large population, and perhaps even the vast majority, preferred the social and sexual company of other men. Pirates largely came from lower class backgrounds where, though certainly not upheld as the norm, men who had intimate relationships with other men were not vilified. In all-male environments like those provided by pirate ships, these men were able to comfortably live outside of the hegemonic heterosexuality upheld by traditional society. This same society, however, was not kept in the dark about the goings-on of the pirate ship. As scholar B.R. Burg writes, “Often the visible symbols of class and occupation were sufficient for sexual classification, much as occupation might indicate possible homosexual preferences today for a hairdresser or an interior designer”. Thus, to the common Renaissance individual, by identifying as a pirate, one was also identifying with a larger culture of explicitly male-male sexuality.
It’s worth pausing here to clarify that although it is tempting to label pirates as “gay” or “homosexual,” some meaning would be lost in translation. Following the work of queer studies scholars like anthropologist Guillermo Núñez Noriega, who in his own work states that “the choice of the term male intimacy […] is intended to mark a particular theoretical position”. The theoretical position of which he speaks is referring to a refusal to inscribe modern meanings of queer identities on people that did not—and, in fact, could not, as the terminology did not yet exist—identify as such. However, this does not render it meaningless to consider the intimacy—both social and sexual—between men through history, as it still nonetheless existed in opposition to the heterosexual ideal.
Thus, by aligning Antonio with piracy and, consequently, male intimacy, Shakespeare established for the Renaissance audience the relationship between Antonio and Sebastian not as one of comradeship but as one of some form of contemporary male intimacy and love that existed contrary to the heterosexual ideal. This was further solidified by explicit references to the intimate relationship they shared. Antonio saves Sebastian from the shipwreck, and later claims “His life I gave him, and thereto add / My love, without retention or restraint, / All in his dedication. For his sake / Did I expose myself —pure for his love— / Into the danger of this adverse town”. And he isn’t wrong: Antonio makes many sacrifices for Sebastian throughout the play. He saves Sebastian’s life. He follows Sebastian to a town that is hostile to his very presence. He gives Sebastian all of his money. He attempts to duel in the place of the character he believes is Sebastian. At the very least, Antonio’s love for Sebastian is clear. There is also some hint toward a physical relationship between the two—“For three months before, / No interim, not a minute’s vacancy, / Both day and night did we keep company”—despite Sebastian’s own feelings being unclear. The love Antonio expresses for Sebastian is akin to what you might find in a modern romantic comedy—a seemingly genuine and “true” love.
There is no great mystery in a plot centering on drag performances opening up discussion on gender and sexuality. But when that discussion has continued for more than four hundred years, perhaps there is reason to take another look. While it’s obvious that the discussion surrounding Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night would be utterly incomplete without some consideration of these themes, the fact that the debate rages on today is a testament to the nuanced nature of the play. Disentangling these themes from the myriad threads that intersect and overlap throughout the play can be overwhelming. The complexity that exists in the gendered underpinnings of the relationships between Viola, Olivia, and Orsino is too great a task for a simple analysis. Fortunately, however, the problematization of gender and sexuality that Twelfth Night makes apparent converges on a seemingly minor character: Antonio. By cashing in on a shared cultural currency on the symbolic meanings of piracy, Shakespeare solidifies for Renaissance playgoers an intimacy between Antonio and Sebastian less superficial than any alternatives presented in the play, thereby making a case for the possibilities available outside of the heterosexual paradigm.
One does not need to look far beyond the surface of Twelfth Night to begin to recognize another surface: the ocean’s. The text is rife with ocean imagery from the very beginning. The play’s second act opens after a shipwreck with the supposed death of Sebastian, Viola’s brother. This is the event that allows for the rest of the play to follow. Without this turning point, there is no masquerade, there is no twelfth night. The shipwreck sets the stage for the split between the siblings—and for Viola’s transformation into Cesario. The importance of the play’s connection to the ocean is underscored by a number of references comparing ocean water to tears. For instance, Sebastian says of Viola that “she is drowned already, sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more”. These moments in the play work to highlight the significance of this force while simultaneously constructing it as one that evokes grief and tragedy.
The construction of the ocean as a source of tragedy and violence, then, neatly aligns with a widely-recognizable nautical character trope: the pirate. The modern pirate stereotype—once you get past the peg-leg and parrot—is not a huge leap from what would have been evoked in the Renaissance imagination. Pirates embodied an extreme performance of brutal and savage masculinity. According to Burg, they “cultivated the masculine attributes of physical toughness, courage in combat, endurance, and comradeship”. Parallel to Twelfth Night’s imagining of the ocean, this hyper-masculine ideal was itself a source of tragedy and violence.
Shakespeare’s use of destructive ocean imagery allows the recognizable trope of the pirate to take shape in the margins of the story, which ultimately allows the audience to make an assumption about Antonio’s background. Midway through the play, while explaining to Sebastian why he cannot see the town’s attractions with him, Antonio says “Once in a sea-fight ‘gainst the Count his galleys / I did some service, of such note indeed / That were I ta’en here it would scarce be answered”. He goes on to say that the “service” he speaks of is not a murderous one, but rather one of thievery. With the aforementioned violent ocean imagery present in the undercurrent of the narrative, this description of a thieving sea-dweller allows for little interpretation but of that of the pirate. Shakespeare allows this to remain the audience’s impression of Antonio until the very last scene, in which he proclaims “Antonio never yet was thief or pirate”. The question then remains: why wait? If Antonio’s identification with the culture of piracy was narratively insignificant, why postpone this point of clarification til the end? Unless, of course, it was anything but insignificant.
By strategically identifying Antonio with piracy through violent ocean imagery and restricted background information, Shakespeare was able to take advantage of a shared cultural currency on the symbolic meanings of piracy. Pirate ships were, for the most part, exclusively sites of homosocial relations. While some may be inclined to believe that—in a world dominated by the hyper-masculine—this would have led to violence over whatever available women existed, all remaining historical evidence points to the contrary. The reputation pirates get for habitually raping the women they met on their journeys is, at least in the case of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pirates, largely unfounded beyond a few notable exceptions to the rule. From what remaining documentation and court transcripts exist to contextualize the lives of pirates, one thing is rather clear—a large population, and perhaps even the vast majority, preferred the social and sexual company of other men. Pirates largely came from lower class backgrounds where, though certainly not upheld as the norm, men who had intimate relationships with other men were not vilified. In all-male environments like those provided by pirate ships, these men were able to comfortably live outside of the hegemonic heterosexuality upheld by traditional society. This same society, however, was not kept in the dark about the goings-on of the pirate ship. As scholar B.R. Burg writes, “Often the visible symbols of class and occupation were sufficient for sexual classification, much as occupation might indicate possible homosexual preferences today for a hairdresser or an interior designer”. Thus, to the common Renaissance individual, by identifying as a pirate, one was also identifying with a larger culture of explicitly male-male sexuality.
It’s worth pausing here to clarify that although it is tempting to label pirates as “gay” or “homosexual,” some meaning would be lost in translation. Following the work of queer studies scholars like anthropologist Guillermo Núñez Noriega, who in his own work states that “the choice of the term male intimacy […] is intended to mark a particular theoretical position”. The theoretical position of which he speaks is referring to a refusal to inscribe modern meanings of queer identities on people that did not—and, in fact, could not, as the terminology did not yet exist—identify as such. However, this does not render it meaningless to consider the intimacy—both social and sexual—between men through history, as it still nonetheless existed in opposition to the heterosexual ideal.
Thus, by aligning Antonio with piracy and, consequently, male intimacy, Shakespeare established for the Renaissance audience the relationship between Antonio and Sebastian not as one of comradeship but as one of some form of contemporary male intimacy and love that existed contrary to the heterosexual ideal. This was further solidified by explicit references to the intimate relationship they shared. Antonio saves Sebastian from the shipwreck, and later claims “His life I gave him, and thereto add / My love, without retention or restraint, / All in his dedication. For his sake / Did I expose myself —pure for his love— / Into the danger of this adverse town”. And he isn’t wrong: Antonio makes many sacrifices for Sebastian throughout the play. He saves Sebastian’s life. He follows Sebastian to a town that is hostile to his very presence. He gives Sebastian all of his money. He attempts to duel in the place of the character he believes is Sebastian. At the very least, Antonio’s love for Sebastian is clear. There is also some hint toward a physical relationship between the two—“For three months before, / No interim, not a minute’s vacancy, / Both day and night did we keep company”—despite Sebastian’s own feelings being unclear. The love Antonio expresses for Sebastian is akin to what you might find in a modern romantic comedy—a seemingly genuine and “true” love.
The idealized form of love apparent between Antonio and Sebastian stands in stark contrast to what is revealed of the heterosexual couplings that arise at the end of the play. These are seemingly meant to reverse the complex and socially oppositional nature of the various same-gender almost-relationships that have dissolved at this point but do not entirely accomplish this goal. In the case of Olivia and Sebastian, Sebastian’s accidental marriage to Olivia is unimportant to her on the simple basis that Sebastian still looks like Cesario, the man she “really” loved. Similarly, Viola has merely replaced in Orsino’s mind Olivia, his own “true” love—or will, that is, as soon as she dresses in gender-appropriate attire. These relationships work to reinstate the heterosexual paradigm by the end of the play, yet they are left with a sense of hollowness and superficiality. Once this paradigm is reinstated, Antonio’s character becomes unintelligible within these social trappings and simply disappears from the narrative without any real sense of closure. Shakespeare leaves the play with both a literal and symbolic feeling of being unresolved as part of a larger project working to combat and parody a greater societal obsession with fulfilling the heterosexual norm. Shakespeare, whose own sexuality has been under much speculation in modern times, is ultimately arguing that when society prioritizes gender over all else in relationship formulations, much is lost. Unfortunately, not much progress would be made on this front for several centuries to come.
