Twelfth Night was written by William Shakespeare around 1600 as the last of his three "mature comedies" (the other two being Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It). Like his early comedies, Twelfth Night is essentially a celebration of romantic love and can be seen as a traditional romantic comedy. The play has many of the elements common to Elizabethan romantic comedy, including the devices of mistaken identity, separated twins, and gender-crossing disguise, and its plot revolves around overcoming obstacles to "true" love. Like other representatives of the genre, Twelfth Night also features a sub-plot in which a self-inflated character, the steward Malvolio, is brought to his knees through a trick set up by the cunning Maria and drunkard, Sir Toby Belch.

The humour in Twelfth Night is undertone. It is not uproariously funny but it consists of many other aspects of humour that the characters are not always aware of. The humour is aimed at the ludicrous and not the ridiculous. It makes us laugh at the follies

The use of dramatic irony is also very important to the aspects of comedy. There are many issues developed in the text which contain dramatic irony such as the sub plot that Cesario is actually a women named Viola.

To add comedy to his plays, Shakespeare uses certain characters, such as Feste, the fool. Feste provides a lot of the comic relief in the play

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 791
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)