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She Wistfully Wonders In An Aside How She Could So Quickly Catch The Plague; ...

She wistfully wonders in an aside how she could so quickly catch the plague; Olivia realizes she feels [Cesario's] perfections with an invisible and subtle stealth to creep in at [her] eyes (Act I, Scene V, lines 290-296). Viola is therein driven into Orsino's arms, her meagre manipulation compounded by Olivia's transgression, not that of Viola as Cesario. Orsino and Olivia are therefore manipulative, however indirectly, of Viola/Cesario in their own right.

The homoerotic implications of TN are more far-reaching than in AYLI, particularly in the case of Viola's accidental seduction of Olivia. Unlike Celia, Olivia is patently unruly, establishing her wildness in the history of her categorical rejection of fellow nobility, most notably Orsino. By Elizabethan standards, a sexually deviant love triangle is hence completed: Viola loves Orsino, who does not love Viola but loves Olivia, who in turn rejects Orsino and loves Viola as Cesario. Laurie Osborne focuses on the homoerotic relationship between Olivia and Viola/Cesario in her The Trick of Singularity: Twelfth Night and the Performance Editions, noting such passionate friendships such as that between Viola and Olivia only drew criticism when the women defied patriarchal controls by cross-dressing or by adopting and maintaining masculine behaviours (Osborne 1996, p. 97). Celia and Rosalind/Ganymede were not nearly the threat to Elizabethan values to the extent of Viola/Cesario and Olivia due to the alleged cognizance of Celia that Ganymede was actually Rosalind. While Viola, like Rosalind, adopted a male alter ego presumably to rejoin a society that shunned them.

Though the measures they adopted were unorthodox, there was no outright malice as the actions taken toward each other did not exclude the male contingent of society. Viola/Cesario and Olivia did not act in collusion together, and therefore they were not necessarily a pernicious threat to the Elizabethan patriarchy. Osborne digresses, claiming Viola and Olivia, of course, both maintain masculine behaviours and cross-dressing habits; Viola dresses as a boy, and Olivia boldly woos Cesario, thus usurping the male role of courtship (Osborne 1996, p. 97). While there is no doubt that Olivia transgresses sexual boundaries, she never cross-dresses in the pursuit of Viola/Cesario. It is Viola who cross-dresses to be Cesario, and it should be noted that outside her employment in the estate of Orsino, Viola does not serve any other interests in her stint as a man. Her position as subservient to Orsino is overstepped by her aspirations upon hearing Orsino's professions of adulation while dressed as Cesario; Viola insists she will do her best to woo [his] lady, but in an aside concedes to herself that whoe'er [she woos], she would be his wife (Act I, scene iv, lines 40-43). However, Olivia's attraction bears no common bond with Viola's employment of Orsino.


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