Disguises in Twelfth Night

Disguises are a big part of the plot in the play Twelfth Night.  The most obvious example of a character that uses disguise is Viola pretending to be a boy named Cesario.  She puts on the clothing of a man and everyone assumes that she is a man.  This causes a lot of confusion, especially with Olivia who begins to fall in love with “him.”  A similar problem also arises for Viola because she falls in love with Orsino, who assumes that she is a boy.  I think that Shakespeare is showing how ridiculous human attraction can be.  Just a change of clothing can make someone attracted to someone else that they normally would never be interested in.  Malvolio also uses a change in clothing to try and attract the female character that he is interested in.  He assumes that by dressing in strange attire, he will win Olivia over.  He daydreams about being Olivia’s husband and sees himself as above all of her other servants.  His change of clothing shows that he feels empowered to rise above to another social class.  Another character that changes his appearance to take on a new identity is Feste.  Feste dresses up as a priest named Sir Topas to make Malvolio think that he has gone mad.  He does not even need to dress up because the room is dark, but he does so anyway.  This suggests that in order to play the part, Feste needed to be wearing the disguise.  Shakespeare brings up a lot of questions about human identity with all of these disguises.  It seems that gender and status can be easily changed with just a change in wardrobe.  People are delusional, and they cannot see passed the physical appearance of each other.  Who a person is should be much deeper than what they look like, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in Twelfth Night.