Laurie Osborne, Oakland University/Colby College
Simultaneity and coincidence are the essential features which connect Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night. Twins, after all, are born at the same time and coincide in one womb. Indeed, Sebastian identifies himself as Viola's twin, rather than merely her brother: "He [Sebastian of Messaline] left behind him myself and a sister, both born in an hour: if the heavens had been pleased, would we had so ended!"1 Though Viola never reveals that her brother is her twin until she is mistaken for him, Sebastian begins his existence in the play as a twin and, just as importantly, as a displaced twin. His lament for lost simultaneity is followed in the next scene by Viola's response to her own emotional quandary: "O time, thou must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t'untie" (2.2.39-40). For both twins, time is the deciding factor: Sebastian regrets the failure of simultaneity in his experience while Viola commits herself to time, both when she adopts her male disguise and when she discovers the situation which that disguise has provoked.2 By rescuing Sebastian, Antonio has, from Sebastian's perspective, disrupted the simultaneity of the twins' experience, which arose from their birth at the same time and was reflected in their crucial similarity of feature. What was once a twinned existence in brother and sister becomes a string of coincidences in Illyria. Whereas before they experienced life at the same time (and would have died at the same time), when the play begins their lives are only coincidentally the same. Both are rescued and befriended by a ship's captain; both set down in Illyria; both decide to serve Duke Orsino; and both are caught in the interplay between Olivia's household and the Duke's. The events which occur to them are similar but no longer identical.
