Representation, as we have discussed in class, is a central theme in Twelfth Night (and certainly in Shakespeare’s sonnets as well). Viola masquerades as a man and Olivia masques herself. The fool qualifies his title as Olivia’s “corruptor of words,” always speaking aslant of meaning, playing with multiplicities, paradoxical, ironic, or taboo, putting language itself to task, doing away with the “over-worn”; And Viola says that the fool is more clever for it: “For folly that he wisely shows is fit, / But wise men, folly-fall’n, quite taint their wit” (3.1.66-7). This play does not just represent representation. It demonstrates how representation might convey reticence and virtuousness in Olivia, sharpness and laudable skill in the fool, deceit on Viola’s part that creates a messy love triangle situation, which, she says at one point, she cannot possibly untangle. Representation and “seeming” in Twelfth Night (if we can say that representation and seeming are the same… ?), are also themselves a matter of interpretation, as we learn in Viola and Olivia’s comedic/cringe-y repartee in Act 3 scene 2. Viola says, “[I think] you do think you are not what you are.” Olivia replies, “If I think so, I think the same of you.” Viola: “Then think you right, I am not what I am. Olivia: “I would you were as I would have you be.” Viola: “Would it be better, madam, than I am?” Olivia and Viola are not, of course, referring to the same sorts of misrepresentation, since Olivia does not know Viola is actually a woman. But their dialogue is so synchronized, so syntactically and tonally matched, that the reader/spectator might lose the plot here. What is the veiled truth? Who is what? Shakespeare’s characters often ask, “what are you?” as opposed to our familiar “who”… So, is there any “authentic” self? What is “authentic”? Can’t representation–especially self-presentation–be authentic? Maybe today, but perhaps not in Elizabethan England.