Twelfth Night: context in depth

The play was written around 1601. Twelfth Night (5 January) was the last night of the Christmas season, a time of feasting, games and misrule, when ordinary rules and hierarchies were playfully turned upside down.
In the play, servants trick their masters, a woman dresses as a man, and a steward dreams of marrying a countess. Order is restored at the end, as it was when the festival ended.

Puritans were strict Protestants who disapproved of festivals, drinking and the theatre itself. Maria calls Malvolio "a kind of puritan".
Sir Toby mocks him: "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?"
The audience at a playhouse would enjoy seeing a killjoy humiliated, though Malvolio's harsh treatment and his final threat, "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you", make the ending uneasy.

Boy actors: women's parts were played by boys, so Viola was a boy actor playing a girl disguised as a boy. This made the play's jokes about gender and attraction even richer.
Class: Elizabethan society was strongly hierarchical. Malvolio, a steward, imagining himself as Count Malvolio would seem absurd and presumptuous.
Illyria: a real coastal region across the Adriatic, but distant enough for audiences to imagine as a romantic, unfamiliar world.
Fools: wealthy households kept professional fools such as Feste, who were allowed to mock their betters.