Twelfth Night Gender Quotes

Diana’s lip
Is not more smooth and rubious. Thy small pipe
Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound,
And all is semblative a woman’s part.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 4. When Orsino first meets Viola who is posing as the pageboy Cesario, he notes that “he” is rather feminine in appearance. So maybe Viola’s disguise is not as good as she thought it was. Orsino goes on, in a rather sensual and suggestive way, to describe Cesario’s physical attributes, like “his” lucious red lips and high pitched voice. Orsino appears to be actually attracted to Cesario. At this point Cesario is about to set off in a bid to woo Olivia on behalf of Orsino, who seeks to think Cesario is perfect for the job.

‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on:
Lady, you are the cruell’st she alive
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Viola, disguised as Cesario, rebukes Olivia for rejecting Orsino’s love and insisting on staying a single woman. She tells Olivia that it would be a cruel disservice to the world for a woman so beautiful not to produce an heir. Her advice about marriage and children takes on a greater significance because Viola is speaking to Olivia as another woman.

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, You should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But you should pity me!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Viola (disguised as Cesario) delivers this speech to Olivia, after Orsino appoints her to bring his messages of love to Olivia. But instead of speaking Orsino’s cliched language of lust, she says the right things to make Olivia fall in love – except it is Cesario that Olivia will fall in love with! In this significant and beautiful speech, Cesario describes what he would do if he loved Olivia as much as Orsino. Writes poems of his love, sing them throughout the night and cry out her name so that the air would echo with it. Viola actually imagines what it means to truly love someone.

Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit
Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast! Soft, soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth’s perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5. Olivia is a little surprised and even upset that she has fallen in love with Cesario. But she can’t deny her feelings. The irony is she loves another woman disguised as a man. What attracts her to Cesario are actually Viola’s womanly characteristics that shine through her disguise.

I left no ring with her. What means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her!
She made good view of me.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 2. Viola as Cesario, meditating on the meaning of the ring and realizing that her male disguise is causing some gender troubles for her. Olivia uses Malvolio in a trick to get Cesario to return to talk with her another day. She sends Malvolio to return Cesario’s ring. Olivia is lying about the ring, but she has fallen in love with Cesario. This passage foreshadows Olivia’s love with Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother.

Let still the woman take
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband’s heart:
For, boy, however we do praise ourselves,
Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women’s are.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Orsino talks about men and women and love to Cesario (Viola), and suggests Cesario marry someone younger than himself. Men are more fickle than women, says the Duke, and more likely to change their love from one woman to another. Women are more committed and faithful with their love, he observes. This foreshadows the end of the play when Orsino’s love does indeed change to another woman.

There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much. They lack retention.
Alas, their love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt.
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much. Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Orsino claims that a woman’s love cannot be anywhere near as strong as a man’s love. Women are not capable of “passion,” he says. He even implies that women are physically incapable of a man’s strong love, their hearts aren’t big enough. He goes on to dismiss woman’s love as superficial, an “appetite” felt only in the “palate.” While his love is constant. If only Orsino could hear how ridiculous he sounds, we can only put it down to the madness sparked by his obsession for Olivia.

I could not stay behind you. My desire,
More sharp than filed steel, did spur me forth.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 3. A good example of love crossing gender lines. Antonio says that his desire for Sebastian is “more sharp than filed steel” – an arrow, sword or spear. There is no denying the closeness and intimacy of the relationship between the two. It is one of the most famous bromances in Shakespeare’s plays, right up there with Hamlet and Horatio (Hamlet), Mercutio and Romeo (Romeo and Juliet), Arcite and Palamon (The Two Noble Kinsmen), and Leontes and Polixenes (The Winter’s Tale). But in this case, it’s a bromance that verges on the romantic – for Antonio, at least. One possible reason for Antonio’s love is that he rescued Sebastian and nursed him back to health.

Go, Sir Andrew. Scout me for him at the corner the orchard like a bum-baily. So soon as ever thou seest him, draw, and as thou draw’st, swear horrible; for it comes to pass oft that a terrible oath, with a swaggering accent sharply twanged off, gives manhood more approbation than ever proof itself would have earned him. Away!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. After Sir Toby talks Sir Andrew into a duel with Cesario (Viola) to win Olivia’s love, he goes on to confuse the notion of “manhood” with swaggering and swearing behavior.

What relish is in this? How runs the stream?
Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;
If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 1. Sebastian wonders if he is mad or dreaming, because the beautiful Olivia whom he has never seen before is in love with him. He doesn’t realize she has mistaken him for Cesario – his sister disguised. Oh what a tangled gender web Shakespeare weaves, where not everybody is who they appear to be.

Blame not this haste of mine. If you mean well,
Now go with me and with this holy man
Into the chantry by. There, before him
And underneath that consecrated roof,
Plight me the full assurance of your faith
That my most jealous and too doubtful soul
May live at peace.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 3. Olivia doesn’t let the grass grow under her feet when she wants to wed her man. Stepping into the traditionally male role she appears with a priest and promptly proposes marriage to Sebastian – mistaking him for Cesario (Viola). Appearances can be deceptive, especially in this play!

Fear not, Cesario. Take thy fortunes up.
Be that thou know’st thou art, and then thou art
As great as that thou fear’st.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1. Olivia speaks to Cesario (Viola in male disguise), believing him to be Sebastian, whom she has just married. She thinks Cesario is afraid of admitting the two of them have secretly married. She urges him to take up his new fortune and elevated social status. Oh what a tangled web these confounded disguises and gender mix-ups weave.

ORSINO: Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times
Thou never shouldst love woman like to me.
VIOLA: And all those sayings will I overswear,
And all those swearings keep as true in soul
As doth that orbèd continent the fire
That severs day from night.
ORSINO: Give me thy hand,
And let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1. This exchange takes places following the climax of the play, when Sebastian and Viola are reunited, and all misunderstandings and deceits are resolved. Viola identifies herself as woman of noble blood and finally gets her man. Orsino asks for her hand and to see her in women’s clothing. But he also addresses her as “boy,” apparently liking her in her male disguise too.
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