Twelfth Night is a comedy about a shipwrecked young woman who disguises herself as a man and serves a duke she falls in love with, while the countess he loves falls in love with her, and a pompous steward is tricked into believing the countess loves him.
Written around 1601, it is often considered the finest of Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, full of music, disguise, and mistaken identity, with a thread of sadness running through its celebrations. This guide covers the plot act by act, the main characters, the themes, and the most famous lines, and ends with a reading of the people the happy ending leaves out. For the other plays, see our guide to all of Shakespeare’s plays.
At a Glance
Here are the key facts about Twelfth Night for quick reference.
Twelfth Night in Brief
The whole story in a few sentences, before the act-by-act detail.
Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria and believes her twin brother, Sebastian, has drowned. Disguised as a young man named Cesario, she enters the service of Duke Orsino, who sends her to woo the Countess Olivia on his behalf. Viola falls in love with Orsino; Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Meanwhile, in Olivia’s household, her uncle Sir Toby Belch, his foolish friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and her gentlewoman Maria trick Olivia’s self-important steward, Malvolio, into believing that Olivia loves him.
Sebastian, alive after all, arrives in Illyria and is mistaken for his disguised sister. Olivia marries him, thinking he is Cesario. When the twins finally meet face to face, the confusion is resolved: Orsino promises to marry Viola, and Malvolio, released from the dark room where he was locked up as a madman, storms off vowing revenge.
Twelfth Night Plot Summary, Act by Act
What happens in each of the play’s five acts.
Act 1: Shipwreck and Disguise
Duke Orsino languishes in love with the Countess Olivia: “If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it.” Olivia, mourning her dead brother, refuses to see him. On the coast, Viola survives a shipwreck and fears her twin, Sebastian, has drowned. She decides to disguise herself and serve Orsino: “Conceal me what I am.”
As Cesario, Viola quickly becomes Orsino’s favorite, and he sends her to woo Olivia for him. The trouble is that Viola has fallen in love with Orsino herself. In Olivia’s household we meet her drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch; the wealthy, witless Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who hopes to marry Olivia; her clever gentlewoman, Maria; her jester, Feste; and her stern steward, Malvolio. Olivia admits Cesario, and Viola pleads Orsino’s case so passionately, imagining how she would “Make me a willow cabin at your gate,” that Olivia falls in love with the messenger. She sends Malvolio after Cesario with a ring.
Act 2: The Letter
Sebastian, alive, arrives in Illyria with the sea captain Antonio, who saved him and has grown devoted to him. Viola realizes that Olivia has fallen for her disguise and sees no way out: “O time! thou must untangle this, not I; / It is too hard a knot for me to untie.”
Late at night, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste are drinking and singing when Malvolio arrives to silence them. Sir Toby mocks his puritanical manner: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Maria devises revenge: a forged letter, in Olivia’s handwriting, that will convince Malvolio his lady loves him. At Orsino’s court, Viola, still disguised, tells the Duke of a “sister” who loved in secret: “She never told her love.” In the garden, Malvolio finds the letter. It urges him to be bold, “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em,” and to prove his love by wearing yellow stockings, cross-gartered, and smiling constantly.
Act 3: Midsummer Madness
Olivia declares her love to Cesario, who gently refuses. Sir Andrew, jealous, is goaded by Sir Toby into challenging Cesario to a duel. Malvolio appears before Olivia in yellow stockings, grinning and quoting the letter. Olivia, baffled, concludes, “Why, this is very midsummer madness,” and asks Sir Toby to take care of him. The pranksters lock him in a dark room as a madman.
Sir Toby frightens both Sir Andrew and Cesario into a duel neither wants. As they draw, Antonio arrives, mistakes Viola for Sebastian, and steps in to defend her. He is arrested by officers of Orsino, whose enemy he is, and is bewildered when “Sebastian” does not recognize him. Viola begins to hope her brother is alive.
Act 4: The Wrong Twin
Sebastian, wandering the town, is mistaken for Cesario by Feste, then attacked by Sir Andrew, whom he beats. Olivia rescues him and, thinking he is Cesario, asks him to marry her. Sebastian, astonished but delighted, agrees, and they go to be married in secret.
Meanwhile, Feste, disguised as a priest called Sir Topas, visits Malvolio in his dark prison and torments him by insisting that he is mad. Malvolio begs for pen and paper to write to Olivia.
Act 5: The Twins Meet
Orsino comes to Olivia’s house, and the confusion reaches its height: Olivia calls Cesario her husband, Orsino feels betrayed, and Antonio accuses the youth of ingratitude. Then Sebastian enters, and the twins see each other at last. Viola reveals who she is, and Orsino, who has grown to love his page, asks her to be his wife. Olivia is content with Sebastian.
Malvolio is released and shows Olivia the letter. The trick is explained, and Feste reminds him of his own mockery earlier: “And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” Malvolio leaves: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” Everyone else goes in to celebrate, and Feste ends the play alone with a song: “For the rain it raineth every day.”
Characters
The main figures in the play, and what drives each of them.
Viola
A shipwrecked young woman who disguises herself as Cesario. Clever, patient, and quietly witty, she loves Orsino but must woo another woman on his behalf, and she never tells him until the end.
Orsino
The Duke of Illyria, in love with being in love. He spends most of the play pining for Olivia, yet grows closer to his page Cesario than to anyone.
Olivia
A wealthy countess in mourning for her brother, who abandons her grief the moment she meets Cesario. She ends up married to the right twin by mistake.
Sebastian
Viola’s twin brother, believed drowned. When a beautiful countess he has never met asks him to marry her, he accepts without hesitation.
Malvolio
Olivia’s steward, proud, humorless, and ambitious. The pranksters exploit his secret wish to marry his mistress and rise above his station, and their joke goes far enough that he ends the play humiliated and vowing revenge.
Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria
Olivia’s riotous uncle, his gullible companion and would-be suitor to Olivia, and Olivia’s sharp-witted gentlewoman, who writes the forged letter. Sir Toby marries Maria at the end.
Feste
Olivia’s jester, a professional fool who moves between the two households and sees through everyone. His songs are some of the most beautiful in Shakespeare, and he has the last word.
Antonio
The sea captain who rescues Sebastian and follows him into a hostile country out of devotion, risking arrest.
Themes
The ideas that run through Twelfth Night and give it its lasting charm.
Love as Madness
Almost everyone in Illyria is in love with the wrong person: Orsino with Olivia, Olivia with Cesario, Viola with Orsino, Malvolio with Olivia. Love strikes suddenly and makes people foolish, and the play enjoys every twist.
Gender and Disguise
Viola, played in Shakespeare’s time by a boy actor, disguises herself as a young man and is loved by both a man and a woman. The play delights in the confusions of desire that follow, and in how little clothes decide who a person is.
Festivity and Its Limits
The play is named for a night of holiday misrule, and Sir Toby’s household lives by its spirit: “cakes and ale.” But the celebrations have a cost, and Feste’s final song reminds us that the holiday ends and the rain comes back.
Ambition and Self-Love
Malvolio believes the letter because he already dreams of marrying Olivia and becoming a count. Olivia tells him he is “sick of self-love,” and the trick works because it gives him exactly what he wants to hear.
Key Quotations
The most famous lines in Twelfth Night, who speaks them, and what they mean.
“If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On”
Orsino, Act 1, scene 1, the play’s first line: “If music be the food of love, play on; / Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken, and so die.” He wants so much music that his hunger for love will be overfed and die. Moments later he is tired of the song.
“Make Me a Willow Cabin at Your Gate”
Viola, Act 1, scene 5, telling Olivia how she would woo her if she loved as Orsino does: build a cabin at her gate, write songs of rejected love, and cry her name to the hills. The passion is Viola’s own, and it wins Olivia’s heart.
“O Time! Thou Must Untangle This, Not I”
Viola, Act 2, scene 2, realizing that Olivia loves her disguise: “It is too hard a knot for me to untie.” She cannot solve the tangle herself, so she leaves it to time.
“No More Cakes and Ale?”
Sir Toby, Act 2, scene 3, to Malvolio: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” Just because you disapprove of pleasure doesn’t mean everyone else must give it up.
“She Never Told Her Love”
Viola, Act 2, scene 4, describing an imaginary sister who is really herself: “She never told her love, / But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, / Feed on her damask cheek.” Her hidden love eats away at her like a worm in a rosebud.
“Some Are Born Great”
Malvolio reading the forged letter, Act 2, scene 5: “some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” The line is now used seriously, but in the play it is bait for a fool.
“Why, This Is Very Midsummer Madness”
Olivia, Act 3, scene 4, when Malvolio appears in yellow stockings, smiling. To her, his behavior can only be madness.
“The Whirligig of Time Brings in His Revenges”
Feste, Act 5, scene 1, reminding Malvolio of his earlier insults. Time spins like a top and eventually pays everyone back. Malvolio answers, “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”
Language and Form
How Shakespeare builds the play, and the techniques that make it work.
Music
The play begins with music and ends with a song. Feste sings of love and death: “O mistress mine,” with its promise that “Journeys end in lovers meeting,” and the melancholy “Come away, come away, death.”
Twins and Mistaken Identity
The twin plot, which Shakespeare had used before in The Comedy of Errors, drives the final confusions. When the twins finally appear together, the audience sees at once what the characters have been getting wrong.
Verse and Prose
The romantic plot, Orsino, Olivia, and Viola, is largely in verse. Sir Toby’s household speaks in lively prose, and Feste moves between the two worlds with his wordplay and songs.
A Closer Reading: The Whirligig of Time
Twelfth Night ends with marriages and promised marriages, as many of Shakespeare’s comedies do, but it keeps its eyes on the people standing outside the celebration.
Viola trusted time to untangle the knot, and it does. The twins are reunited, Orsino turns to Viola, Olivia has her Sebastian, and even Sir Toby marries Maria. But time untangles other things too. When Malvolio is brought out of his dark prison with the letter in his hand, Feste tells him the joke was payback for his own contempt: “And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.” A whirligig is a spinning top. What goes around comes around.
Malvolio does not laugh. “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,” he says, and leaves. The whirligig, it seems, will keep spinning. Nor is he the only one outside the happy ending. Antonio, who risked his freedom out of devotion to Sebastian, stands silent while Sebastian embraces a new wife. Sir Andrew, who spent his money hoping to win Olivia, ends the play wounded from a fight with Sebastian, with nothing to show for it.
And then Feste is left alone on the stage to sing. His last song is about growing up and growing old, and its refrain is the opposite of a holiday: “For the rain it raineth every day.” The festival of Twelfth Night was the last night of Christmas, the end of the season of misrule. The play leaves its audience at exactly that moment: the revels are over, some are happy, some are hurt, and ordinary life, with its daily rain, is about to begin again. Our guide to Much Ado About Nothing looks at another comedy that lets a darker note into the celebration.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about Twelfth Night, answered briefly.
What Is Twelfth Night About?
A young woman, Viola, disguises herself as a man after a shipwreck and serves Duke Orsino, whom she falls in love with. Orsino loves the Countess Olivia, who falls in love with Viola in disguise. When Viola’s twin brother, Sebastian, reappears, the confusions resolve, and the lovers pair off. A subplot follows the trick played on Olivia’s steward, Malvolio.
Why Is It Called Twelfth Night?
Twelfth Night, the eve of Epiphany, was the last night of the Christmas season, traditionally a time of feasting, disguise, and turning the world upside down. The play captures that holiday spirit, though it is never set on that night. Its subtitle, What You Will, suggests a title can be whatever the audience likes.
Why Is Malvolio Tricked?
He breaks up Sir Toby’s late-night party and scolds everyone, so Maria takes revenge. She forges a letter in Olivia’s handwriting that convinces him Olivia loves him and wants him to wear yellow stockings, cross-gartered, and smile constantly.
Who Ends Up with Whom?
Olivia has already married Sebastian, and Sir Toby has married Maria. Orsino promises to marry Viola once she is dressed as a woman again, so their wedding lies just beyond the end of the play. Malvolio, Sir Andrew, and Antonio are left out.
When Was Twelfth Night First Performed?
The earliest recorded performance was on 2 February 1602, at Middle Temple Hall in London, described in the diary of a law student, John Manningham, who particularly enjoyed the trick on Malvolio.
Related Reading
Three pages that take Twelfth Night further.