Shakespeare's Viola appears in the second scene, a young lady without a past, without visible means of support (though she has "gold" to give the worthy Captain), and indeed without most of those trappings of current realism so apparent in Sir Toby and Maria. Like a fairy princess, she appears from nowhere in particular; her ship, of unrecorded port and destination, has been wrecked; and no one ever tells the purpose of this voyage that she so readily abandons. The truculent waves merely toss her on the Illyrian shore, and the comedy begins. Her own first comments are entirely devoted to her brother's fate and to her own immediate plans; and even that little of her past that inference fragmentarily supplies has elements of question.
Clearly, she is of gentle birth: on her first appearance, the Captain, who should know more than we do of her antecedents, calls her "Ladie" and "Madam," Whereas she addresses him by the thee and thou of condescension; both Maria and Sir Toby accept her, disguised as Cesario, as a "gentleman"; the Duke calls her twin brother "right noble"; and indeed, she could not have been so successful a "Seruing-man," an exacting occupation, and could not have impressed the Countess with her "fluefold blazon" of heraldic ancestry, had she not possessed the arts and elegancies that were the prerogatives of rank. In that case, however, she should be married, or at least betrothed. Her father, to be sure, had died when she was but thirteen; but, unless he was remiss, he should have had her future safely settled long ere that; and yet she is apparently un-attached, voyaging about for no known purpose with, as it seems, only her youthful brother as a chaperon.
In short, Viola does not evolve into the play, as Sir Toby does, from a dear and convincing past, but miraculously rises, like Venus, directly from the sea. (Leslie Hotson, 1954)
Her actions, upon safely reaching shore and stepping into the plot, are even more inexplicable.
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