SOURCE: Kerrigan, John. “Secrecy and Gossip in Twelfth Night.” Shakespeare Survey 50 (1997): 65-80.

In the following essay, Kerrigan studies Twelfth Night within the context of the Renaissance conventions regarding secrecy and gossip, finding that gossip is a means—both in early modern society and in the play—of maintaining social bonds. Kerrigan also discusses the affinity between Cesario and Malvolio, noting that as servants both characters are expected to be discreet.

Renaissance secrecy is no longer quite as secret as it was. Art historians and iconologists have returned to the myths and emblems explored by Panofsky and Edgar Wind, and reassessed (often sceptically) their claims to hermetic wisdom. Thanks to Jonathan Goldberg and Richard Rambuss, we now have a better understanding of the early modern English secretary,¹ and of how his pen could produce, in Lois Potter's phrase, Secret Rites and Secret Writing.² Not just in popular biographies of...