(1) It’s a cliché to say of the opening speech that it reveals Duke Orsino to be a man “in love with being in love.” Nevertheless, like most clichés, it’s true. What’s less noticed, but I think more significant, is how self-aware he is about it. He analyzes his condition and even rationalizes it. He is fickle, to the point where the Clown later thinks his doublet should be made of “changeable taffeta” as his “mind is a very opal.” He calls for more music and then seven lines later says “Enough, no more!”

This changeableness is of a piece with the “spirit of love” itself, which is “quick and fresh.” Later in the play he will say the lover is “unstaid and skittish in all motions” save the image of the beloved, and then a few lines later he adapts this to say that even those fancies (of love) remain “giddy and unfirm.” Nothing can satisfy the spirit of love, even for a minute, except the work of the imagination. Indeed it is the fancy that is constantly undercutting love. It alone is high fantastical, which is to say it’s even better than the real thing. And so the Duke prefers to live in a world of imagination, especially if it involves lying in a bed canopied with flowers. Perhaps reading romance novels, or watching porn. OK, that modern reference may jar, but you tell me that what the Duke is describing here isn’t the Renaissance version of edging.

The Duke’s mooning over Olivia is often compared to Romeo’s love for Rosalind before he sees Juliet. And I think we all get the feeling by the end of the scene that these two posers deserve each other. But again the difference is that the Duke is aware of the fact that he’s just playing a game, as (or so he supposes) is Olivia, and that the chase is more fun than actually getting what he wants, which will only lead to his loss of appetite. He’d rather be pursued by his fell desires than have them catch up to him. And this is something he’s thought about.

Shakespeare’s great theme is the world as a stage and our lives all performances. This is most obvious in his political plays (kings are always conscious of playing to an audience), but it’s just as important in the romances and comedies. It’s certainly the structuring principle in Twelfth Night, and for the skill with which it’s introduced here I think this the best opening speech in the canon.

(2) Does Orsino’s self-awareness make him cynical? I think the shoe fits. Illyria is a profoundly cynical place. It’s not one of Shakespeare’s magical, topsy-turvy forest worlds of freedom and liberty, where “Nothing that is so is so.” That only happens when everything gets disrupted by the new arrivals. Normally, it’s a world where everything has its place and its price. I think Feste has more coins tossed at him than any other fool of Shakespeare’s. Olivia, when targeting Cesario, calculates what she’ll need to “bestow of him”: “For youth more oft is bought than begged or borrowed.” You have to pay for the young stuff! Toy boys don’t come cheap, even in Illyria. Viola, meanwhile, is offended at the notion of receiving pay for her services (“I am no fee’d post.”). She’s from out of town, and I’m left feeling that neither she nor her brother are going to be happy long in this place.

The final scene goes further in underlining the underlying nastiness. Sir Toby isn’t a jolly Falstaff (to which he’s often compared) but an angry drunk. Which is to say, the worst kind. His line “I would we were well rid of this knavery” after the abuse of the imprisoned Malvolio is often seen as his expressing a moment of conscience. In fact, as the immediate follow-up makes clear, he is only concerned about offending his niece and putting his longer game at risk. In his final lines he explodes on Sir Andrew in an uncalled for way, revealing the hate that fuels his cruel pranks. Orsino threatens Viola with some unspeakable torment (“My thoughts are ripe in mischief”) just to spite Olivia. It’s all about getting back, getting revenge: “I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love. To spite a raven’s heart within a dove.” Not nice! But not to be outdone in this orgy of nastiness, Feste turns out to have been a bitter grievance collector all this time, waiting for the “whirligig of time” to bring him his revenges on Malvolio. You’d think a professional fool would have a tougher skin. And finally Malvolio stalks off threatening his own revenge on everyone, and not without cause.

What was Malvolio’s crime? “He hath been most notoriously abused,” but why? Because he’s a Puritan spoilsport? I don’t think so. I think a more likely reason lies in the way cynical people naturally tear each other apart. Malvolio may be a responsible steward (and in that household someone has to do the job), but he’s also a climber who gives himself airs. Imagine him having a chance with Olivia! As the Reverend Elton explains to Emma, “Everybody has their level.” And he (the Reverend) should know, as he was trying to be a climber too. Sir Andrew is, unconsciously, also aware of this: delighting in playing the same trick on Malvolio that is already being played on him. That’s psychologically apt and a very nice touch.

What I mean by cynics tearing each other apart is that when you’re just using people to get ahead the thing that really makes you mad is seeing other people using people to get ahead. Malvolio at least has a job; Sir Toby and Maria are only mean-spirited parasites, feeding off Olivia or Sir Andrew’s three thousand ducats a year. And being parasites they see everyone else as having the same jealous motivations. Malvolio is a threat not because he’s a killjoy but because he’s competition. The same sort of attitude can be seen in Valentine’s suspicion, noted by Viola, of how quickly Cesario has risen in Duke Orsino’s affections. This is just the kind of place Illyria is. Cynical. Nasty.

(3) What with all of the present day’s obsessions over gender fluidity and gender obsessions, Twelfth Night is as current now as it’s ever been. Is the play’s interest in these matters superficial though? Is there anything more to it than just cross-dressing and a change of pronouns?

Instances of true homosexual attraction are rare in Shakespeare. Seeing any of that going on involves a fair bit of reading between the lines, and building up cases of same-sex affection that may have been only literary conventions in 1600. These same conventions may have been strategies to work around the fact that Shakespeare couldn’t very well have presented a loving homosexual couple on stage at the time. Antonio in this play (much like Antonio in The Merchant of Venice) is one example of a same-sex bond that today we’re likely to look at as representing sublimated sexual feelings. It just seems as though there must be something more going on in this place than friendship can account for.

That said, Duke Orsino wins my vote as the most openly gay character in Shakespeare. Of course here we’re reading between the lines here too, but many critics have pointed to the significance of the way Viola never puts on her “woman’s weeds” at the end of the play, and that Orsino takes her hand calling her “boy.” As Tony Tanner puts it: “It is possible that Orsino actually prefers her as Cesario – the adoring, beautiful boy servant.” Which is much like the role Olivia has in mind for him.

But then, Viola seems to like being Orsino’s boy. There’s no particular reason why she adopts male dress in the first place. What should she do in Illyria? Why, play dress-up. Sebastian, in comparison, just wants to wander about and play the tourist: “let us satisfy our eyes / With the memorials and the things of fame / That do renown the city.” Then he’ll hit the pub. But Viola jumps right away at the chance to play a eunuch and then a young man. I wonder if she heard something more about Orsino from her father, and she chooses to put on drag to conquer. All of which makes me ask what Sebastian means when he says that “nature in her bias drew” Olivia to Cesario. Is it a bias in Orsino’s nature that drew him to the same boy?