Twelfth Night is celebrated on the 6th of January and commemorates the feast of the Epiphany. It is not a big holiday in the United States, and not much of a holiday in England any longer; but in Elizabethan times it was a feast day which was observed throughout society. Some scholars hold that Shakespeare wrote this play as an entertainment to be presented after the feast on Twelfth Night. With all the sexual innuendos, cross dressing, drunken behavior, and religious satire, the student may well ask if this is a suitable entertainment for a religious holiday.

The answer to this question depends perhaps on one's religion. The High Anglican Church continued the tradition of feast days; but the developing puritan wing of the Anglican Church (only one church was allowed in England at this time) was much opposed to the excesses of feast days. Stephen Greenblatt points out that in 1601 Queen Elizabeth had as her guest of honor at the Twelfth Night Feast an Italian nobleman, Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano. Further, the Duke wrote to his wife saying that he was entertained on that evening with "a mingled comedy, with pieces of music and dances." Nevertheless, scholars are not in full agreement that Orsino actually saw Shakespeare's play.

Other scholars believe that the play was written to comment on the spirit of Twelfth Night, a feast that in some ways might be equated with Mardi Gras today. Mardi Gras has been commercialized and I think exaggerated, but the idea is one of the upsetting of traditional authority, a license for drunkenness, and lewd behavior. Twelfth Night, which celebrates the anniversary of the arrival of the three wise men from the East to visit the Christ Child, was much the same though perhaps not quite so public.