William Shakespeare cut his teeth writing history plays that delved deep into the intricacies of statecraft and kingship.
Shakespeare also explored political violence through tragedies such as Macbeth and Julius Caesar.
But even the crowd-pleasing romantic comedies he was knocking out in the 1590s were deeply political works despite their light and laughter.
Take Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s latest and greatest comedies, written and staged shortly before the death of Elizabeth I in 1603 against a febrile backdrop of courtiers jostling for power, Catholic plots and brewing social unrest.
Shakespeare by this time was a court favourite but he had to tread carefully in his work to avoid official censure and even imprisonment.
This is one reason why his plays tend to have far-away settings, either in time or geography, even though the issues they explore are topical and indeed timeless.
Twelfth Night is set in Illyria, an obscure Mediterranean state that acts as a proxy for Elizabethan England. Its ruler is the Count
Orsino, who at the play’s start is seeking to marry the wealthy and beautiful Countess Olivia.
Had Shakespeare’s story followed the conventions of his time, the union would have taken place as the natural and proper way of things: wealth marries wealth, power is extended, an heir is produced to continue the ruling dynasty.
This would have been expected, and accepted, even if the couple involved were not in love, especially among the social elite.
But this would have made a very short play.
As it is, there’s a snag...
Olivia refuses not only to marry, but even to meet Orsino. She is in mourning for her recently deceased brother and has shut herself away for seven years.
Orsino, hamstrung by unrequited love, and not a little irked that his romantic overtures are being flatly denied, falls into a state of melancholy, incapable of doing anything but flop about listening to soppy songs (“If music be the food of love, play on...”).
With the country’s two most powerful fi gures temporarily out of action, rival parties jockey for power.
In Olivia’s household, the ambitious steward Malvolio plans to marry his mistress, defying social convention, and leapfrog into the aristocracy, while her drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch, plots Malvolio’s downfall and the marriage of his wealthy friend Sir Andrew to his niece.
Meanwhile in Orsino’s court, the androgynous fi gure of Viola, who is masquerading as a boy, secretly longs to marry Orsino whilst paying court to Olivia on his behalf.
Feste, Olivia’s Fool, offers sardonic commentary throughout, like a kind of Renaissance Squirrel Nutkin, channelling anarchic energy and the spirit of misrule into the drama.
A complex plot develops involving many comic misunderstandings, role-reversal and gender-bending, before finally resolving into a conventional happy ending that marries off the lovers but leaves behind a host of questions about the role of money, social ranks, gender, sexuality and—oh, yes—love, in human relationships.
It is not difficult to read Shakespeare’s history plays politically since their subject is politics.
But in fact, all of Shakespeare’s work invites political readings since all his work poses fundamental questions about human nature and the social order.
And while his plays generally end on a conservative note, with the status quo of social power structures restored, the journeys to that politically safe resolution explore genuinely radical alternatives.
Alternatives that in Twelfth Night reflect a startling number of society’s most urgent concerns: gender instability, LGBT and identity politics, class barriers, and feminism.