 Now, let's begin by discussing broadly the key events that happen in the 12th night. So as you can see behind me, essentially, I've created a mind map explaining the main major events that happen in the play that you should be aware of. Now, let's go through it. So the play begins with us learning about two twins, Viola and Sebastian. So Viola is a girl and Sebastian is a boy. They are separated in a shipwreck and Viola seems to be the only survivor and she believes that her brother, her twin brother, has been killed in the shipwreck. So Viola, believing that Sebastian's dead, she, because she realizes that she's completely alone in the world, we also learned that her father has died, so she's basically an orphan. She believes that she's alone in the world and as a woman it will be very difficult for her to navigate this new complicated environment. So she decides to disguise herself as a man, to disguise herself as a man and also to rename herself as Cesario. Once she disguises herself as a man and becomes a man called Cesario, she seeks employment at the Duke's place. So bear in mind, the setting is Illyria and the Duke of Illyria is Duke Orsino. So she decides to work for Duke Orsino, however, whilst she's working for him, they have a real close connection, a bond, and she falls in love with Duke Orsino. However, she can't do anything about it. She's a man. She is of a totally lower class and Duke Orsino working as one of his courtiers and servants, so she really can't do anything about it and she believes that this love will be unrequited. Now Duke Orsino quickly starts trusting Cesario, so of course this is Viola that he trusts, and we learn that Duke Orsino is in love with another lady, another lady who's part of the nobility in Illyria called Olivia. He's in love with her and he's tried to woo her and get her to marry him, however, she has rejected him and the main reason for her rejecting him is because her brother has died and she's decided that she's going to reject all male suitors for seven years. So Duke Orsino believes that maybe Cesario will be able to somehow navigate this and try to convince Olivia to marry him and to of course return his love for him. Now Orsino therefore sends Viola of course as Cesario. He sends Viola to try to win over Olivia. However, of course this ties into the element of comedy. Once Olivia meets Cesario and just feels like this instant connection with him, she falls in love with Cesario and she completely forgets this vow that she made, that she will have no male suitors as she's mourning for her brother. So actually she switches from being very anti-talking to anybody who is connected to Duke Orsino to actually wanting Cesario to propose to her and to marry her. So she falls in love with Cesario. I've been honest to her, of course she doesn't know that she's talking to Viola who's a woman. And of course Viola is stuck between a rock and a hard place because she doesn't want to reject outwardly Olivia and make her upset and angry but at the same time she needs Olivia to accept Duke Orsino's hand in marriage. Then we learn about Olivia Stewart and of course within the royal household in Olivia's own household there's also a lot of politics amongst the servants. So Olivia has a lady in waiting called Maria who's one of her servants, a very close servant and she also has another steward called Malvalio. Now we learn Malvalio is very pompous, he thinks he's better than other servants and Maria really hates him so she decides to play a trick on him. There's also Sir Toby Belch who is Olivia's drunken uncle and he's trying to hook Olivia up with Sir Andrew and of course Olivia totally refuses. However Maria decides to play a trick on Malvalio and Maria along with Sir Toby, he's on the trick as well as Sir Andrew, they decided to trick him into thinking that Olivia loves him. Now Malvalio is convinced not only that Olivia loves him but he's also convinced to dress up in a certain way as he reads a letter which basically he believes is from Olivia, it's Maria that's written it. He reads this letter, it tells him to dress in a very flamboyant way because Olivia, according to the letter, will like it but also of course this is his way of trying to woo her and seduce her and of course Malvalio is really happy that Olivia loves him because if you were to marry her his social status would go up. So he does this and whilst he's doing this, Olivia is totally unaware so she sees Malvalio acting in what she sees as very bizarre, he's wearing things that she hates which is just very garish clothing and Olivia decides that he has gone mad and this is used as a pretext in order for Maria, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew who all hate Malvalio to have him imprisoned and to be accused of madness, okay? Then Sebastian who was ultimately rescued so he didn't die in the shipwreck initially, he was rescued by another man called Antonio who really dedicated himself and helped him get to Illyria. Sebastian arrives to Illyria of Antonio. Now, we realise that Antonio is actually an enemy of Ducos. You know, however, Antonio is very, very loyal to his friend Sebastian who's Viola's twin. Once he arrives in Illyria, he's a wanted man and he is arrested and taken away, okay? And of course, Sebastian, once he arrives in Illyria, Olivia encounters him. Now, Sebastian looks exactly like the male version of Viola, okay? So when Olivia encounters him, she is really happy because she believes it's Cesario. Sebastian is a bit confused. He doesn't understand why this royal woman is in love with him. However, he goes along with it and Olivia says, let's get married and they get married, okay? And of course, that's what adds all the more to the humor. Sebastian married someone who literally doesn't know but Olivia is also really happy because she's now married Cesario or who she believes to be Cesario. Now, this gets back to Ducos, who hears that Cesario, his servant, has married Olivia and he is furious at first. However, Viola and Sebastian ultimately end up meeting and it's then ultimately revealed that Viola had took on this elaborate disguise. Cesario is Viola but also Sebastian hasn't betrayed Ducos because he's not the same person that was working for Ducosino. We also realize that Ducosino was slowly falling in love with Cesario and Viola and he feels relieved that he wasn't falling in love with the man, he actually was falling in love with the woman. So Ducosino and Viola, who's now her true identity is shown, they marry Sebastian and Olivia marry and also separately, Maria and so Toby also marry but sadly for Antonia and Malvolio, things don't end that well. Malvolio is still left in terms of believing that he's mad but equally also Antonia is still imprisoned. So this is an interesting but fairly complex play. As I've mentioned before, this play is very short so it seems deceptively easy and straightforward to understand, however, there's lots of disguise using this play, there's lots of humor but also there are a lot of underlying messages relating to gender, relating to class that we're going to unpack and discuss in a bit more depth. But that's really it when it comes to understanding the plot of the play 12th night in a nutshell and hopefully you found this summary useful.