‘All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts’. (Shakespeare and Van Every, 1906)

While historical convention may have dictated the separation of Shakespeare’s plays into comedy and tragedy, the reality of the stories and characters therein is a vastly more human depiction; that which contains comedy and tragedy, multilayered and multifaceted.

As a playwright born of an actor, Shakespeare understood his cast, likely writing parts intended for specific actors. Intrigue surrounding the deception and identity of Viola in Twelfth Night is heightened by the consideration of the young male actor who would play them. Viola – disguised as her brother and page Cesario – is sent on behalf the Duke Orsino – who Viola is secretly in love with – to confess love to Lady Olivia; resulting in Olivia falling for the messenger, Cesario. 

‘And yet by the very fangs of malice I swear that I am not that I play’ (Blakeway Productions, 116 Films and THIRTEEN in association with Shakespeare's Globe, 2012) 

As stated in “Conceal Me What I Am...” for Shakespeare Uncovered; ‘It allows you to make a series of jokes about gender, cross-dressing, boys playing girls…there’s a lot of language to do with impersonating the voice of another gender.’ (Blakeway Productions, 116 Films and THIRTEEN in association with Shakespear's Globe, 2012)

Shakespeare presents identity as flippant – a changing thing that can easily be created, moulded and assumed. Like actors perform a role, his characters too perform roles predisposed to them by society, or roles which they assume to escape the bounds placed upon them. For Viola, it’s through her ‘role’ as Cesario and position as a page to the Duke Orsino that she is able to speak plainly and on somewhat equal footing about her feelings for him. It is through adopting this identity that she gains this element of freedom of expression.

Rosa Inocencio Smith, writing for the Atlantic, muses on how themes of identity fill Shakespeare’s portfolio of plays ‘Shakespeare was “an inveterate punster,” piling meaning on meaning in every phrase so that even his words have double identities. What’s more, his plays are filled with masks and mix-ups, double agents and disguises, lookalikes and false appearances.’ (Smith, 2016)