Richard Pickersgill's Orsino and Viola

As hermaphrodites/transvestism in regards to Twelfth Night was our presentation group's focus, I was left with a lot to think about as we began to read this work. The secondary title of What You Will suggests that Shakespeare was intending for this to be purely a playful piece. But moving towards the end, as we see the characters pair off heterosexually, it seems the resolution to all problems comes too easily, as if what Shakespeare was playing with didn't sit all too well with him once he considered the resolution. If gender roles were as fluid during his time as our research suggests, maybe Shakespeare was experiencing a homosexual panic himself like some of his viewers after writing about this confluence of identity.
Another thing I noticed was the emphasis, not so much on cross-dressing, but rather merging sexual identity as seen in the androgyne, and I was glad we went that route with our research. When Sebastian says, "Nor can there be that deity in my nature,/Of here and every where," and "You are betroth'd both to a maid and man," it seems to be harkening back to the idea of the idealized spiritual aspect of the androgyne. And perhaps it is this, rather than worry about homosexuality, that Shakespeare was trying to emphasize - the return to the natural order seen in Plato's Symposium.