At the conclusion of Twelfth Night, as part of the long-awaited and heavily overdetermined reconciliation scene, comes a revelation that modern audiences would surely find disconcerting if they paid attention to it. Sebastian, in the course of catechizing his disguised twin sister Viola, gives their age at the death of their father as 13 (5.1.237-41). They cannot be much older than this during the course of the play: they are prepubescent, constantly mistaken for each other; Sebastian's voice has not yet changed, and his facial hair has not begun to grow. Even for Shakespeare's audience, their youthfulness would have been striking, an index at the very least to the precociousness of sexuality in Illyria. Indeed, if they are still 13, it means that, though Sebastian and Olivia have by this time married, the husband has not yet even reached the age of consent, which at this period in Shakespeare's England was 14 for men, 12 for women. We find this moment unnoticeable because Sebastian and Viola, in modern productions, are roles for mature actors, not children. Sebastian's combative energy and erotic readiness suggest at the very least advanced adolescence, and would have suggested it to Shakespeare's audience as well: the physiologists of the age placed the onset of active male sexuality at 15 or 16.