What they will: comic grammar in Twelfth Night

Abstract

This article will examine modal auxiliary verbs, particularly “will”, to explore the nature of volition in Twelfth Night. Criticism of the play often tends to ascribe volition only to the audience of the play, as though “what you will” only applies to the viewer and not to the inhabitants of Illyria, who are, in this view, casually trundled about by fate or comic convention. However, while the characters may speak in the language of fate, throughout the play they nevertheless find ways to act upon their desires. In Twelfth Night, hope itself is a willed action, not a passive state, and the characters find ways to live in the future tense – in the space created by “I will” – as a strategy for survival.