Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night deals with the typical subject of romantic comedy such as fertility, reconciliation and harmony as well as the functional relation between desire for power and sexual desire in human life. Shakespeare tries to show that western society, with the arrival of Renaissance, entered the era in which the structure of economy and social status were changing and faced the fear of social fluidity, and that the relation of men and women changed through the mediation of idealistic marriage. That is to say, many people of middle class standing started to dream the promotion of social status by using the social fluidity of the Renaissance.
Two characters can be contrasted in the viewpoint of Deleuze’s ‘difference’ and ‘repetition’ in this work. Malvolio tries to fulfill the desire for power and sex through the coupling with Olivia even in daydream and by using distorted literal translation of the letter. In this process he imitates the images of high class prominence such as Olivia so that he just remains in monotonous repetition of them. Eventually he is forced to be isolated and punished by showing his hidden desire for her, explicated by Sir Toby. Sir Toby, as a deputy of power, strives to punish him into imprisonment, the punishment as Foucault’s concept, for which Malvolio announces his revenge to the community. In spite of Olivia’s asking for his understanding and forgiveness, he cannot transfer to good emotion on the border line between reconciliation and revenge. He enters into an ugly situation over the limit of revenge spirit, so that he cannot transfer to good emotions of reconciliation and forgiveness for the community by which he was punished.
In contrast, Viola creates the difference by differentiating herself into various images through disguise into male person and unmasking as her strategy of survival. In addition, she leads Olivia and Orsino to overcome the sameness and to create the differences through ‘good meeting’ of Deleuze. Accordingly Olivia can escape from excessive sadness from her brother’s death through the meeting with Cesario(Viola) and comes to love Sebastian. Also, Orsino comes to marry Viola by overcoming his narcissism in loving Olivia. Sir Toby overcomes social status to marry Maria and shows mild attitude later about the punishment of Malvolio. In the end, Viola’s ensuing results in marriage with Orsino after her unmasking, by which the form of romantic comedy, endangered by the announcement of revenge, can be maintained even incompletely by restoring the comic vision.