Suffraging Shakespeare

Extract

[...] Being Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby doubtless comes with some noble clout as well as cash, even if most of his income is swindled from Sir Andrew. Toby is Maria's ticket out of servitude. Besides, he spends most of his time being drunk and stupid, so who do you think will wear the pants in that relationship? Maria: the male race: 0. Portia did it. Rosalind did it. Why not Viola? Ah, Viola - here we arrive at the play's protagonist, the heroine, the everywoman (even as she frolics in the garments of the everyman). [...]

[...] Suffraging Shakespeare Set in the idyllic landscape of far-off Illyria, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night presents a tale of mischief and merriment, marriage and masquerade. It's the stuff great plays are made of: someone dressing in drag, someone donning yellow stockings, blatant homoerotic tendencies flying every which way. But beneath the cross-gartered surface lies a seedy underbelly teeming with premonitory feminist subtext that, while refraining from being overt in its guise of transvestism, nevertheless paints a very real portrait of the power of women in the 17th century. [...]

[...] Every line Olivia has up until Act III is either a demand or a reprimand. It isn't until she falls in love with Cesario that she deigns to wax poetic what a deal of scorn looks beautiful/ In the contempt and anger of his III 198). Here, she is briefly able to loose the dominant reins she has exercised upon her family and staff and allow herself to feel once again. Love trumps grief. In fact, after Cesario appears on the scene, there is no further mention of Olivia's dead brother. [...]