C. L. Barber included Twelfth Night in his definition of « festive world », as its title refers to the Feast of the Epiphany, but more modern criticism has seen it as a staple text for gendered, psycho-analytic, metadramatic readings. The present study was envisaged as a scene-by-scene, close reading of the play, in the course of which several essential issues — aesthetic, dramatic, ideological — are clarified. Particular focus is paid to the mythic dimensions of the text as well as to the various forms and complex functions of language.