Tracing a Heterosexual Erotics of Service in Twelfth Night and the Autobiographical Writings of Thomas Why thorne and Anne Clifford

Abstract

With its various depictions of sexual intrigues between servants and employers, Twelfth Night provides an unusually clear window into a powerful erotics of circulating in the early modern pe riod. Recent analyses of this eroticism have focused primarily on Vi ola. Cristina Malcolmson has aptly argued that Caesario/Viola's role as servant models the willing service she will offer in her role as wife.1 More radically, Lisa Jardine has represented an early modern eroticism less concerned with a partner's gender than with the expec tation of submissiveness.2 From these perspectives, Orsino's com mand to Viola, Come hither, boy (II.iv.15), assumes an erotic appeal that includes, yet goes beyond, Viola's selfless love and the pleasures of gender-blurring, to make visible the erotic potential within the unequal power relationship inherent in condition of ser vice itself.3 Other sexual encounters generalize this erotics beyond the figure of Viola: Olivia's uncle Sir Toby Belch marries Olivia's waiting woman Maria, his beagle true-bred (II.iii.178); Maria places Sir Andrew Aguecheek's hand on her ample buttery bar (I.iii.69); and even the asexual Malvolio makes a move on Olivia. While critics

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