SOURCE: Slights, Camille. “The Principle of Recompense in Twelfth Night.” Modern Language Review 77, no. 3 (July 1982): 537-46.

In the following essay, Slights maintains that Twelfth Night illustrates the thematic principal of reciprocity as the foundation of successful human relationships.

Like Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, Twelfth Night moves from personal frustration and social disorder to individual fulfilment and social harmony by means of what Leo Salingar has shown to be the traditional comic combination of beneficent fortune and human intrigue.¹ This basic pattern, of course, takes a radically different form in each play. In comparison with many of the comedies, Twelfth Night begins with remarkably little conflict. The opening scenes introduce no villain bent on dissension and destruction, nor do they reveal disruptive antagonism between parents and children or between love and law. In contrast to the passion and anger of the first scene of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the...