Nothing that is so is so : disguise and identity in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Sir Philip Sidney's The Old Arcadia

This thesis compares Shakespeare's festive comedy, Twelfth Night, to Sir Philip Sidney's pastoral romance, The Old Arcadia, in terms of their use of disguise and mistaken identity. The characters must overcome these obstacles of mistaken identities, mistaken beliefs, and disguises so they can find their true identities and re-establish the social order that was disrupted at the beginning of each work. The two works are complementary. By examining their genres, the way they both portray nature, the social order, providence, the folly of self-love, and losing the self to find the self, I have shown that by considering these issues a better understanding of the quest for self-knowledge present in both works can be seen.