ABSTRACT
Messaline, the place from which Viola and Sebastian have come, is even more shadowy than Syracuse in The Comedy of Errors, or those wars from which Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick find release in Messina. Antonio, already bewitched as sees it by Sebastian, is accused of madness by Orsino's officer when it tries to explain his situation. The Comedy of Errors, which plays the same game of mistaken identity in a doubled form, had also made use of images of madness. It is part of the whole atmosphere of the Feast of Fools suggested by the play's title, not simply a product of the failure to understand that there are two Cesarios. There is only one character that can restore some sense of unity to Twelfth Night at its ending, mediating between the world of the romantic lovers and our own world, which is that of the chastened Sir Andrew, the sobered Belch and the unbending Malvolio.
