Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a play with themes parallel to the festival madness from which it takes its name. The main plot of the plot plays a lot on this by mixing up the gender stereotypes that were very present at the time. However, a subplot involving secondary characters defines this theme even more. He takes the idea even further by relating the serfs' attempts to blur the lines between social classes. Twelfth Night's Maria and Malvolio both have great aspirations to rise above their social class. However, Maria succeeds where Malvolio fails due to her ability to exploit the satirical atmosphere of her mistress's family to achieve her goals. To begin this essay, I will provide a brief analysis of the atmosphere of the work. I will also establish the atmosphere created by Shakespeare to give a comedic tone to his story which would otherwise have been a sappy story focused on romance. The opera, which actually has the full title Twelfth Night, or whatever, was written specifically to be performed on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. In Elizabethan England, this was a day when people were given slices of cake cooked with a pea and a bean. The two people who eat the special slices are named King and Queen of the evening's festivities. As Shakespeare intentionally tried to emulate, the themes of the festivals revolve around servants allowing themselves more privileges than were usually granted to them by their masters. As demonstrated by Shakespeare in the play, people sometimes dressed as the opposite sex or even as wealthy nobles. Centering the plot of his play around this is what took his play from being merely romance oriented to being more comedic and therefore more appropriate... middle of paper... inevitably fails to achieve its goals. To conclude, although the main plot of Twelfth Night revolves around a melancholic love story, what truly makes it a comedy is the uneven atmosphere created by the subplots to resemble that of the festival of the same name. In the play, both Maria and Malvolio, Olivia's servants, show great aspirations to rise above their social classes. Maria, however, being much more in tune with the unusual atmosphere of the house, easily manages to marry a nobleman, while Malvolio, rigid and pompous, fails miserably. The conclusion of the show, contrary to what the viewers would ever hope to happen in their real life, manages to bring enjoyment to all the lower class people who watched it. Although the show includes many clever paradoxes, it is first and foremost a show created to entertain the servants during their rare fun-filled day off..