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Twelfth Night, a la Shmoop. You've just been shipwrecked on an island.

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You've got a few options. You could anthropomorphize and befriend a volleyball.

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You could go searching for polar bears or smoke monsters.

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Or, you could always dress in drag and do the hula.

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In Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, this last option is the one chosen by Viola, who

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has been shipwrecked on the island of Illyria <<uh-leer-ee-uh>>.

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Well... almost. She puts on a man's clothes and calls herself Cesario <<suh-zar-ee-oh>>.

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She never actually does the hula.

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So... why did Shakespeare think that it wasn't such a drag for one of his characters to...

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go drag?

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What point was he trying to get across with all this cross-dressing?

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Well... when Viola entered the service of Duke Orsino, disguised as Cesario, she ended

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up spending a lot of time talking with the duke.

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Maybe Shakespeare has Viola pretend to be a man because that sets the drama of Orsino's

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story in motion. See, not only does Viola fall in love with the duke...

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...but he unwittingly has his good buddy Cesario go to a young lady named Olivia to profess

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love on his behalf.

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Olivia promptly falls head over heels for Cesario, who, of course, is actually a girl.

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But maybe it wasn't so much about the demands of the story. Was Shakespeare simply interested

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in the gender dynamics of the Elizabethan age?

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During his time, women didn't act in the theater. Instead, the character of Viola would have

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been played by a boy...

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...a boy playing a girl who's pretending to be a boy.

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Wrap your head around that one, Tootsie. It could be that Shakespeare just wanted to

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explore the idea of gender as a fluid part of our identity, rather than as a set of rules

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imposed on us by society.

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After all, Viola doesn't pretend to be Cesario forever.

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Ultimately, her twin brother, Sebastian, marries Olivia, after Olivia mistakes him for Cesario.

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This forces Cesario to reveal that he is, in fact, a chick named Viola. Now that Olivia's

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no longer in the picture, Duke Orsino decides to marry his former best friend.

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So what was Billy Shakes' main reason for writing this... transgender-bender?

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Did he set out to use cross-dressing as a dramatic tool?

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Did he want to provide us with a window into Elizabethan gender dynamics?

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Or was he making a statement about love... that it's more about what you've got between

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your ears than what you've got... between your legs?

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Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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