SOURCE: "'What You Will': Social Mobility and Gender in Twelfth Night," in The Matter of Difference: Materialist Feminist Criticism of Shakespeare, edited by Valerie Wayne, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp. 29-57.

In the essay below, Malcolmson explores the links between gender and social class in Twelfth Night.

When Sebastian enters the last scene of Twelfth Night and begins to untangle the various intricacies of the plot, Duke Orsino describes his vision of Sebastian and Viola together in these words:

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons—
 A natural perspective that is and is not.

Orsino refers to a set of Renaissance artifacts, including complicated mirrors, which highlighted the effect of perspective on human vision. With some of these 'perspectives', a confusion of images would resolve themselves into clarity if viewed from one indirect position. In others, like Holbein's famous painting of 'The Ambassadors', two images could only be...