What Twelfth Night Character Are You?

You are Orsino.  You are one of the main characters in Twelfth Night who is caught up in a crazy love triangle. You help set up the background of the play with you title Duke Orsino which help the audience picture the land of Illyria as a kingdom. Your external conflict is his love sickness over Lady Olivia, a female that you never speak to during the entirety of the play.  The amount of love you have for this lady is almost unhealthy where you spend a great amount of time thinking and writhing love letters to Olivia.  You even believe he could die if you are not able to have her as your wife (Shakespeare, 10).  Since you are the Duke of Illyria who is also known to be brave, loyal, gracious, noble and a gentleman,  the audience respects you.  There is, however, a reason that the audience may not like you. It can be puzzling why you seem so infatuated with Olivia but switch so readily to Viola at the end of the play (Shakespeare, 207-231). This suggests that you are probably more concerned with the idea of love, rather than the person you love, and this doesn't go over so well with the audience. Someone famous who could play the role of Orsino is Manti Te’o, a once well respected, great college football player who fell in love with someone he never met in real life but just on the internet but later found out it was a hoax and not really a girl.

You are Lady Olivia. You are one of the main characters, but not the protagonist. You live in a large manor with several servants and relatives that play minor roles in the play. You are a noble of Illyria, and are being courted by Duke Orsino (Shakespeare, 9). However, you are not that in to him so you insist that you are mourning for the death of your brother and will not marry for seven years (Shakespeare, 35-38). Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Orsino starts sending his new servant, Cesario, to deliver his love letter and you fall in love with him at first sight (Shakespeare 15-39). In one aspect, this causes the audience to like you more because Cesario (Viola) is very well liked by the audience. But on the other hand, the audience does not look favorably on the fact that at the end of the play, you turn on a dime and marry Sebastian, Viola's twin (Shakespeare, 207-231). Just like Orsino, you seem to be more motivated by the idea of love, than the person that you love. One actress that could play this role is Natalie Portman, who is very good at portraying regal characters that fall in love with someone outside of their class, as seen in Star Wars.