Deception In Twelfth Night Quotes

Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness,/ Wherein the...enemy does much.

It is like one of the riddles or charades in the plays themselves—as if the plays have spilled off the stage, and we have all become players in a comedy that the author himself set in motion. Mistaken identities abound in Shakespeare. Reputations are false. Appearances are deceptive. Things are not what they seem. “I am not what I am,” says Viola, disguised in Twelfth Night as the boy servant Cesario.

both plays, the audience is wise to the deception, sharing with Viola and Iago an inside knowledge to which the other characters are not privy. We observe the consequences of being taken in: both the comic consequences in Twelfth Night and the tragic ones in Othello.