By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The character of Olivia in Shakespeare’s classic comedy Twelfth Night; or, What You Will is one of his more complex comic heroines, because of the inner conflict raging within the character after she falls in love with what she thinks is a young servant named Cesario (but is in fact a young woman named Viola in disguise).
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Of all Shakespeare’s comedies, Twelfth Night is perhaps the most perfect: the most technically and structurally accomplished, the most unified in terms of its wordplay and themes and characters, and the most profound. Beneath all of the cross-dressing and mistaken identities, Twelfth Night probes some deep truths about the nature of love.