UW THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
Caught in the Pendulum: Countess Olivia and the Tension Between Fate and Choice in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will
"Not too fast! Soft, soft! Even so quickly may one catch the plague?"
Ellie Bowman
Exploring Olivia's experiences in Twelfth Night, or What You Will reveals the tension between fate and personal control in the fluid world of love and romance. Through Olivia’s journey, Shakespeare presents love as pendulum-like, swinging between individual choice and forces beyond human control.
Olivia is one of the central figures in the many romantic plots in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will. At the beginning, she vows to mourn her brother's death and refuses all romantic advances. Olivia initially tries to control her life and emotions, when facing the loss of her sibling. She chooses to isolate herself while mourning, rejecting any advances of companionship, Olivia lives a belief that she can decide whether or not to love. However, when Viola arrives disguised as a man named Cesario, Olivia unexpectedly falls in love. This plants the seed for the play's main love triangle and demonstrates how love can arise suddenly and irrationally, subsiding control and following fate. Her attraction to Cesario shows that love is not entirely under anyone's control. Despite her intentions to fight fate, she falls in love almost instantly overriding all her personal plans and rational decision- making. In wrestling with the sudden, overwhelming emotions of falling in love, she refers to the feeling of falling in love as ‘catching the plague’, which is quite a dark and grim interpretation of something that is usually referred to in a more positive way. Through a series of events that unfold in the world of Illyria, she eventually marries Sebastian, Viola's twin brother.
In Twelfth Night, or What You Will, Olivia is a perfect illustration of the subject between the tensions of fate and personal control in love; like a pendulum swinging, this tension is not stagnant but moving. It is fluid and ever changing, and moving with rhythmic timing. The characters find themselves alternating between trying to direct their romantic destinies and being swept along by the current of circumstances beyond their control. Which leads us to question, would this outcome suggest that fate guides events toward a happy resolution? Is love ever intentional, rational or a choice? Was her choice simply obsession and infatuation after only a brief meeting? Was it truly beyond her control as it conflicts with her original plans?
Shakespeare introduces this tension through the play’s title itself as well, “Twelfth Night, or What You Will”, which itself swings between what is predetermined and what is left to individual choice. The phrase “Twelfth Night” points toward something that is fixed and predetermined. It is the name of a particular night in the calendar, associated with the end of the Christmas season and, historically, with collective celebration, festivities and a sort of grand finality. The characters enter a world that already has rules, identities and expectations imposed upon them. But Shakespeare immediately follows this fixed title with “or What You Will,” this phrase shifts the pendulum in the opposite direction. It introduces
the possibility of individual desire, choice and freedom. The title itself creates a tension between what is given to us and what we choose for ourselves. “Twelfth Night” represents the forces of tradition that establish how we exist, while “What You Will” offers the freedom to respond or resist those pressures. It unlocks an ulterior option to swing in an opposing direction, the choice being up to the individual.
