The Sad and Merry Madness of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Ambiguities lie at the heart of Twelfth Night: the folly of love and the erotic confusion that ensues, the malleability and fixity of gender and class identities, and the coexistence of the carnivalesque and the melancholic. “I am as mad as he”, says Olivia, “If sad and merry madness equal be”. Marked by generic trouble, the drama capitalizes on both high and low comedy, with the main plot focusing on love triangles and the subplot on farce with the gulling of Malvolio. Identity is exposed as well as concealed in a play which promotes and yet challenges heteronormativity as well as upward social mobility. This collection of essays draws on gender, sexuality and queer studies, as well as ecocriticism and class-sensitive critical approaches to offer new perspectives on this dramatic work that defies binary thinking.