Twelfth Night and She’s the Man
Introduction
The play I will be analyzing is Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, alongside its modern
movie adaptation She’s the Man. Twelfth Night was written around 1601–1602 and was first
performed publicly on February 2, 1602. As with most plays written by Shakespeare, Twelfth
Night was inspired by many other myths and fables that were popular at the time. One of the
more obvious ones being an Italian play called Gl’Ingannati (The Deceived Ones). Both stories
center on themes of mistaken identity and complex love triangles, forming the backbone of their
comedic plots.
Twelfth Night was written during the Elizabethan era, a period marked by a rigid social
hierarchy. Society was divided clearly into classes such as nobility, gentry, middle, and lower
with almost no possibility of moving up in ranks. This social order is reflected in the play,
through characters like Malvolio, whose desire to marry into the upper class makes him a target
of ridicule. The title as well is a reference to the Twelfth Night festival, a celebration at the end
of the Christmas season known for its disorder, revelry, and temporary subversion of social
norms. This is the atmosphere the play mirrors in it’s themes of disguise, love and confusion.
The play also reflects attitudes towards love and marriage during that time. While marriages,
especially among the elite, were often arranged for financial or social gain, romantic love was
becoming a fashionable subject in literature, influenced by the ideals of courtly love.
Shakespeare explores various forms of love: genuine affection between Viola and Orsino,
unthinking infatuation from Olivia, and even self-love, as seen in Malvolio. Twelfth Night
portrays love as both chaotic and transformative, challenging the boundaries of gender, class, and
identity in a way that is reflective of both the Elizabethan era as well as modern times.
She’s the Man adapts Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night by translating its core themes of mistaken
identity, gender disguise, and romantic confusion into a modern American high school setting,
while also keeping the same ideals of feminism and breaking social order.
Literature Review
Amanda Lee's thesis draws liberally from Judith Butler's argument that gender is not born but
performed. Through the cross-dressing of Viola as Cesario, Twelfth Night illustrates how gender
is performed through costume, act, and sight rather than biology. Viola's cross-dressing
destabilizes binary gender categories, and makes both masculinity and femininity performative
roles. Lee's experience as a director and performer in an all-female company led her to conclude
that action is gender-neutral. Genders are attributed by audiences on the basis of outward signs
such as voice or clothing. Her production embraced a continuum of gender presentation, using
casting and performance to resist essentialist definitions of identity. She also emphasizes how the
Elizabethan theater, with an all-male cast, imposed an additional layer on performance of gender
such that Shakespeare's audience was uniquely positioned to observe gender as constructed. Her
feminist reading reinterprets Shakespeare's play use of disguise as a severe criticism of gender
fluidity.
On the other hand, Rachel Shulman's criticism denies that Twelfth Night has a satisfying comic
ending. She recognizes how the characters of Antonio, Malvolio, and Feste are kept on the
margins or emotionally unfastened. Antonio's unrequited love for Sebastian, Malvolio's
humiliation, and Feste's piteous ballads all add darker hues which render festive mood
ambiguous. Olivia and Sebastian's and Orsino and Viola's marriages are based on mistaken
presumptions and unpickable homoerotic tension, above all that of Orsino with Viola/Cesario.
Collectively, these scholars undercut the reductionist description of Twelfth Night as romantic
comedy. They show that the play actually questions how flexible identity and gender really are,
blurs the lines between social roles, and resists a neat ending, while still leaving plenty of room
for modern audiences to rethink what it all means.
Comparative Analysis
One of the main themes of the movie is of course, gender roles and equality. In both the film and
the play, Viola disguises herself as a man to spaces and opportunities that are otherwise denied to
women. However, the difference is the motivations behind her disguise and social commentary
in each version of the story.
In Twelfth Night, Viola’s disguise is a means of survival. After being shipwrecked and believing
her brother dead, she takes on a male identity to protect herself in the foreign land of Illyria and
to seek work. Viola’s cross-dressing in the play is used to criticize the rigid gender norms in
Elizabethan society. Our protagonist’s intelligent, articulate and emotional perceptiveness allow
her to successfully take on the male role and thus, challenge what people traditionally consider
feminine and masculine traits.
In She’s the Man, Viola disguises herself for slightly less dire circumstances. She dresses up as a
man to play on the boys’ soccer team at her twin brother’s school, Illyria Prep, after her own
school cuts the girls’ team. Here, the goal shifts from survival to asserting gender equality as well
as securing her ideal future. Viola wants to play soccer because she plans to use it to receive a
sports scholarship and go to her dream university. However, with the cancelling of her own
school’s sports team, her future is thrown into disarray. While the movie simplifies
Shakespeare’s complex treatment of gender, the core theme of gender as performative remains
intact, especially as Viola adopts comedically stereotypical masculine behaviors to maintain her
disguise, and those around her still believe it. Although Twelfth Night is more subtle and
philosophical in its treatment of gender, and She’s the Man more direct and comedic, both works
convey a similar message. Another theme both plays share is romantic confusion centered on
mistaken identity and unrequinted love.
In Twelfth Night, Orsino is infatuated with Olivia, who falls in love with Viola disguised as
Cesario, while Viola harbours hidden feelings for Orsino. This love triangle becomes
complicated further with Sebastian, the twin brother of Viola, also arriving in the scene.
Shakespeare utilizes such complications to establish the emotional conflict and the irrationality
of romantic passion. Shakespeare questions if love has much to do with real emotional
connection or superficial attraction, particularly as Olivia readily transfers her feelings from
Cesario to Sebastian with little hesitation. Meanwhile, the play suggests that love can transcend
social boundaries, gender roles, and logic and finally celebrates a kind of emotional truth above
strict logic.
She's the Man sets up this love triangle in a 2000s high school setting. Viola, who is posing as
her twin brother, Sebastian, befriends Duke (the stand in for Orsino), who is in love with Olivia.
Viola falls in love with Duke, and Olivia falls for the fake Viola. The comedy arises from the
mortification and cringe factor created by Viola not being able to express her real feelings
without betraying her real identity. The stakes are lower emotionally than in Twelfth Night, but
the film raises questions about why people are drawn to each other. Is it physical attraction,
emotional connection, or social pressure?
While Shakespeare's resolution involves several hasty weddings and a joyous reunion, She's the
Man is lighter with Viola’s secret being revealed at a public soccer game, and the character
misunderstandings are rectified through open communication and not sudden fortune. The film
also ends with mutual understanding but no forced or arranged marriages. This is a statement of a
shift in cultural norms: modern audiences are more concerned with actual contact and individual
desire than with the tidy social resolutions seen in the Elizabethan era.
Oof the most striking differences between Twelfth Night and She's the Man lies in their medium,
audiences on whom they were composed, and cultural reception. Shakespeare composed his play
for an Elizabethan audience familiar with theatrical conventions such as gender disguise and
provisional reversal of social roles. The use of an all-male cast added yet another layer of
complexity, in that male actors were depicting female characters who themselves are
impersonating men. This multilayered acting would have served to remind the audience quite
strongly of the constructed and performed quality of gender identity.
To the audience of Shakespeare, Twelfth Night would have been both fun and modestly socially
subversive. Its playful references to a holiday dominated by role reversal and disorder would
have been entertaining for audiences, encouraging them to criticise class, gender, and the
volatility of identity.
By contrast, She's the Man was crafted for a teenage, predominantly American viewer in the
early 2000s. Its venue is high school, its motivation sporting, music, and physical slapstick
humor, and its genre teen romantic comedy. While it has many allusions to its Shakespearean
origins, most people may not identify it immediately as an adaptation. But the film has
established a strong cultural constituency, and especially among young women, because of its
empowerment and gender equality themes. During the time of social media, She's the Man has
been revive, and its clever lines, quotable lines, and strong obvious feminist themes.
Lastly, She's the Man illustrates how adaptation is a form of cultural translation. Though it lacks
the poetic wording of Twelfth Night, it recasts the play's essential themes in a medium and
register that is common and appealing to the contemporary teenage audiences.
Critical Discussion
She’s the Man is not just a comedic retelling of Twelfth Night; it’s also a cultural adaptation that
transforms Shakespeare’s exploration of gender identity to fit the expectations and tropes of a
2000s American teen rom-com. Rather than critiquing Shakespeare’s play, the film simplifies
and modernizes the original themes to making them more digestible for a younger teenage
audience. While Shakespeare's play invites critical examination of gender as performance
through Viola's disguise and Elizabethan cross-casting's doubled the theatricality, She's the Man
reinforces gender stereotypes alongside its hero playing with them. The exaggeratedly masculine
actions of Viola—deep voice, girl crazy, fighting on the field houses—are funny only because
they're recognized as a ruse. This aligns with Judith Butler's theory of performativity of gender,
though the film doesn't necessarily subvert norms; instead, it bundles them up for comedic effect.
The film's boarding school setting, dominated by competitive sports culture, frames gender as
something that must be proved through physicality and social codes. Viola must not only appear
male but excel at traditionally masculine pursuits like soccer and flirting with girls. Her success
challenges the idea that such skills are inherently gendered, yet the film still relies on visual
comedy and heterosexual resolution to restore normative order. The movie stops short of fully
deconstructing gender roles, instead settling for empowerment within the bounds of conformity.
Still, the enduring popularity of She’s the Man reflects how strongly audiences respond to stories
of disguise, identity, and love. Even in its lighter, more humorous approach, the film echoes
Twelfth Night’s deeper questions about how identities are shaped by circumstance, performance,
and perception. Both works encourage viewers to rethink how gender and love function within
society, not just as natural states, but as roles we are often expected to play.
Conclusion
By comparing Twelfth Night and She’s the Man, we can see how adaptations can reshape the
meaning of traditional plays to convey the same themes to a different time period and audience.
Shakespeare's original utilized the stage and its exclusively male cast to subtly question identity
and gender expectations, but She's the Man reframes that question for a teen crowd by rewriting
cross-dressing and identity confusion as a sporting, romantic comedy. This comparison shows
how adaptations are not merely retellings, but also reinterpretations shaped by current cultural
context.
Citation
“Historical Context - Twelfth Night.” Revision World, https://revisionworld.com/levelrevision/english-literature-gcse-level/shakespeares-plays/twelfth-night/historical-context.
Lee, Amanda. Gender Performance in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. 2019. University of Central
Florida, MFA thesis, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/6367.
Sun, Zhixu. “Gender and Disguise in Twelfth Night: The Fluidity of Identity.” Journal of
Humanities, Arts and Social Science, https://doi.org/10.26855/jhass.2023.11.022.