As in all of Shakespeare's plays, the characters make all the difference. Twelfth Night has a rich array of all kinds of assorted types and I will not have the opportunity here to discuss them all, but I would like to touch upon the major figures.

Orsino should be a very major figure, but he is not. Though the most important figure in the play (he is after all the Duke of Illyria) he is actually relegated to support status because he is rendered ineffectual by his chronic self-absorption in love. It is not so much that Orsino is in love with Olivia, it is the fact that he is in love with the idea of being in love. All of his courtiers are focused on trying to alleviate his pain, but of course nothing works. At the end of the play, his attention is shifted to Viola, and so students naturally ask, "If Orsino were so in love with Olivia, how did he suddenly change to Viola?" The answer has more to do with Shakespeare's view of love than with Orsino's character. In play after play, Shakespeare has characters drop in and out of love on the turn of a word. He does not see love as a deep and abiding commitment and no one demonstrates that better than Orsino. Students also often comment on Orsino's gender choice. "What's this about Orsino falling for a man, actually a woman in disguise? Is this some in the closet homosexual theme of Shakespeare's?" I personally am very uncertain about that. Today, in what appears a more open society, we are quick to make homosexual associations in such situations. I think Shakespeare is more interested in making his audience laugh and shake their heads in puzzlement, than in trying to make a thematic point. But I could be wrong.

Viola is clearly the main character in this play. She is intelligent, quick witted, determined, and possessing very sound judgment. At the opening of the play she has suffered a huge loss, her ship is wrecked and she washes up on a foreign shore with only the soaked clothes she is wearing and the good wishes of her companion, the sea captain. By the end of the play she is pledged to the Duke, the richest most powerful man in the kingdom, and it is very clear that she will have little trouble from him. ...