I first studied Twelfth Night in high school, at a time of life when I dreamed deliciously over the romance and collapsed into giggles at the comedy. Though so many years have passed since then, and I’ve read Twelfth Night again and again, discovering more each time, I know that I still haven’t penetrated the depths of this comedy’s meaning. Perhaps in the hope of finally understanding, I’ve always treasured the Oxford student edition (1959) that we used as teenagers. The editor, George H. Cowling, explains Twelfth Night’s unique appeal:

[Shakespeare] did not merely scoff at folly: he wisely knew that mankind is imperfect, and that people, even the wisest of men, are not entirely creatures of reason….He found men a little less than angelic, but was content to have them so. And so he laughed at affectation and egoism, not merely with the rational intellectuality of the satirist, but with delight, because human nature is what it is.

Shakespeare was never more romantic, more comic, more wise, than in Twelfth Night. Each of Shakespeare’s comedies has its own beauties; but for wit and humour (and surely it is the function of a comedy to be comic) this in my opinion is the best of them all. (pp. 19-20)

Forty years later, Harold Bloom recorded a similar response:

Despite my personal preference for As You Like It, which is founded upon my passion for Rosalind, I would have to admit that Twelfth Night is surely the greatest of all Shakespeare’s pure comedies….I think the play is much Shakespeare’s funniest.
(Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. London: Fourth Estate, 1999, pp. 226, 228)

Bloom contrasts the directness of Twelfth Night with Shakespeare’s problem comedies such as Measure for Measure (1603) and late romances such as The Winter’s Tale (1609) and The Tempest (1611). While not everyone who has thought about Twelfth Night agrees with Bloom’s judgment that it is “direct,” it is still often regarded as Shakespeare’s “most popular play” (Findlay and Oakley-Brown, eds. Twelfth Night: A Critical Reader, 2014, p. 1). James Schiffer’s “Introduction: Taking the Long View” to  his edition of “New Critical Essays” (2011) is an insightful survey of the staging history and recent thinking about Twelfth Night. Schiffer writes, “While not one of [Shakespeare’s] most controversial plays, it has proven to be very elusive, difficult to interpret and to stage (p. 1).”

EDITIONS

Twelfth Night is one of eighteen plays not published in Shakespeare’s lifetime but included seven years after his death in the collected edition known as the First Folio (1623). All subsequent editions are based on this text, which begins on folio [page] 255 [left]. The Folger Publishing Shakespeare website allows users to play virtually with the First Folio and to read the earliest surviving text of Twelfth Night. Those interested in Twelfth Night‘s publishing history can compare the text on the Folger website with the text, with transcription, of the Bodleian Library’s [Oxford, UK] First Folio [Bodleian Arch. G C.7]. Professor Emma Smith, Fellow in English at Hertford College, Oxford, tells the story of the Bodleian’s loss and re-acquisition of this copy:

Treasures of the Bodleian: Shakespeare’s ‘First Folio’ by Bodleian Libraries [4:44 mins]

If you live or holiday in Sydney, you might like to visit the Shakespeare Room at the State Library of New South Wales in Shakespeare Place, where one of Australia’s two copies of the First Folio is available for viewing–an experience not to be missed.

THE PLAYWRIGHT

Harley Granville-Barker, whose much admired minimalist staging of Twelfth Night took place at London’s Savoy Theatre in 1912, refers to Twelfth Night as “the last play of Shakespeare’s golden age” (“Preface to Twelfth Night,” in Prefaces to Shakespeare, Volume VI, introd. Edward M. Moore. London: B. T. Batsford, 1974, p. 26).

Shakespeare was thirty-seven, and at the height of his popularity as a playwright when he wrote it. Twelfth Night is often regarded as the culmination of Shakespeare’s comic writing, seen earlier in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595), The Merchant of Venice (1596), the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV (1596-1598), Much Ado about Nothing (1598), and As You Like It (1599-1600).

The funeral of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet, eleven years old and Judith’s twin brother, took place in Stratford on 11 August, 1596. (See discussion in Shakespeare’s Major Plays, Volume 1 Shakespeare had already drawn on the comic potential of twins (multiplied by two!) in The Comedy of Errors. Perhaps wishing to memorialise his son, he re-created the theme in Twelfth Night, where the twins Sebastian and Viola are separated by shipwreck. Unlike Hamnet, Sebastian survives. Known only to the audience and his friend Antonio, Sebastian’s survival causes multiplying comic confusions until the twins are joyfully reunited in Twelfth Night’s Act 5 climax.

I recommend that you enjoy Hamnet in conjunction with Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World (New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004). This absorbing and perceptive factual biography links events in Shakespeare’s life with analyses of the plays and poems that he was writing at the time or subsequently.

DATING, TITLE AND EARLY PERFORMANCES

The first documented performance of Twelfth Night took place on 2 February 1602, at Candlemas, the Church’s feast celebrating the baby Jesus’ Presentation in the Temple (Luke 2:22–39). Shakespeare’s company, the Chamberlain’s Men, performed before an audience of law students and lawyers in the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court (law colleges) in central London–see Mahood’s discussion, introduction, pp. 7-11, and Barber, Chapter 10, pp. 272-73. Even in Shakespeare’s time, this was a prestigious venue: https://www.diaryofalondoness.com/visit-middle-temple/. John Manningham, a fourth-year law student, commented on the performance in his diary:

A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widow was in love with him, by counterfeiting a letter as from his lady in general terms, telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc. And then when he came to practise, making him believe they took him to be mad.

The title “Twelfth Night” refers not to Candlemas but to the Feast of the Epiphany, which falls twelve days after Christmas–i.e. 6th January–in the Church’s calendar and commemorates the Wise Men’s “epiphany,” or sight of the Christ child. For Elizabethans–at least for those with time for partying–these twelve days and nights were a period of joyful “misrule,” when social hierarchies and behavioural expectations were turned upside down. We’ll trace this festive overturning in our discussion of “Attitudes and Issues” in Twelfth Night.

In The First Night of Twelfth Night (London, 1954), Leslie Hotson argued contentiously that the actual first performance was at the royal court’s Epiphany celebration on January 6, 1601, when Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracchiano, a visitor to Elizabeth’s court, was in the audience. Most critics do not accept Hotson’s dating, but Don Orsino’s visit may have suggested the name of Shakespeare’s Duke.

Shakespeare probably wrote Twelfth Night in 1601, either immediately before or straight after Hamlet. The true date of its first performance is unknown. Despite its associations with a season of the Church’s year, Twelfth Night is not a religious play, unless you consider optimism, humour and joy to be religious feelings. Critics nevertheless agree that Twelfth Night has a dark side: “happy ever after” is not the fate of every character, and death is referred to often.

STAGING

Shakespeare seems to have designed Twelfth Night for easy transport between professional staging at the Globe Theatre, which was the home of the Chamberlain’s Men from 1599, and amateur venues like colleges and great halls. In contrast with many of his plays, performance does not require an upper stage, i.e. a balcony. The two upstage (back-of-stage) entrances in the public theatre or dining hall could stand for Orsino’s and Olivia’s houses–members of each household could enter consistently from one door or the other.

A few judicious words at the beginning of scenes and within them transmute the central playing area—the apron stage in the public theatre, the more restricted area in the Middle Temple—from the sea coast of Illyria, to one or the other of the two noble households, to the route between them, and to a city street. The fluidity of locale encourages speedy scene changes and a fast-flowing, lively presentation. (See Michael Dobson’s discussion of “The Play in Performance,” Penguin Edition, lxiii-lxx. For photos and images of performers over time, go to: Shakespeare’s Staging: Media Resources for Students & Teachers.

Props and Locations

• A painted piece of furniture might represent “the box tree,” which in Olivia’s garden is the tricksters’ hiding place for watching Malvolio’s response to the counterfeit letter. A “walk” (path) for Malvolio is also required (Act 2, Scene 5, line 14-21).
• In Act 3, Scene 1, line 94, Olivia commands, “let the garden door be shut,” so she can listen to Cesario, Orsino’s messenger, in private. Keir Elam suggests in his edition of Twelfth Night that the scene is a hortus conclusus, a walled garden often used during the Renaissance for private conversations (p. 254). At the Globe the garden was presumably the central inner stage, but it must have been difficult to represent in the hall of the Middle Temple.
• Sir Andrew refers to Olivia’s garden as “the orchard” (Act 3, Scene 2, line 6).
• An onstage tent or, again in the public theatre, the inner stage or the space under the stage might be Malvolio’s prison (Act 4, Scene 2, lines 21-133). Shakespeare seems to have wanted Malvolio in his prison not to be visible to the audience.

SHAKESPEARE’S SOURCES

The ultimate source for Twelfth Night was the Menaechmi, a farce about identical twins written about 100 BCE by the Roman playwright Plautus. Sixteenth-century Italian comedies, Gl’Ingannati and Gl’Inganni (“The Deceived”) followed Plautus, and later an Italian prose narrative derived from the Italian plays was translated into French. Barnaby Riche’s English prose romance, Apolonius and Silla, in Riche His Farewell to Militarie Profession (1581) adapted the French version. Shakespeare also knew Emanuel Forde’s prose romance, Parismus the Renowned Knight of Bohemia (1598).

Twelfth Night shares a plot about twins, holiday associations, a performance venue, and an early audience of lawyers with The Comedy of Errors, first performed at Gray’s Inn (another of the Inns of Court) in Christmas festivities held on 8 December 1594. I recommend the 1983 BBC production starring Roger Daltry and Michael Kitchen, which is admirably faithful to Shakespeare’s text. The Comedy of Errors is an ingenious and very funny play. Some characters are subtly drawn. Arriving from different cities, two sets of boy-twins with the same names–Antipholus and Dromio–double the plot confusions which in Twelfth Night broaden into insights and deepen into feeling.

Despite the sources listed above and the similar material to be found in The Comedy of Errors, characterisation, events and plot developments, as well as the distinctive mixture of poetry and prose, of lyrical and earthy language in Twelfth Night are overwhelmingly Shakespeare’s invention.

Concerning the romantic forerunners of Twelfth Night, R. S. White writes, “These precursors are all quite unsentimental and farcical, and we must acknowledge that Shakespeare himself was the inventor of the genre itself, dramatised romantic comedy, forging romance as the popular medium of his time into shapely plays about courtship.”  (“The Critical Backstory,” in Findlay and Oakleigh-Brown, eds. Twelfth Night: A Critical Reader, p. 31.)

You’ll find a thoughtful discussion of Shakespeare’s sources in Twelfth Night in Michael Dobson’s Introduction to the Penguin Edition, pp. lii-lvi. (See “Modern Printed Editions” below.)

THE SETTING OF TWELFTH NIGHT

Illyria is the ancient name of a country on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea (formerly Yugoslavia, now Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina). However, “Illyria” in Shakespeare’s play is open to interpretation, and while you read you might like to keep other possibilities in mind.

Michael Dobson describes Illyria as “this self-indulgent lover’s territory” (Introduction xxii). He points out: “we find ourselves in Illyria at the outset, and we stay there…the world beyond comes to us as nothing more substantial than a succession of rumours” (xxiii); and for both Viola and Sebastian “getting washed up on Illyria may turn out to be rather like dying and going to heaven” (xxiv). “Illyria is a sunlit never-never land of love and poetry, outside the ordinary historical time in which we mere mortals are trapped” (xxiv). Even so, “the choice of Illyria as a setting places love and escapism alongside danger and death” (xxvi).

GENRES OF TWELFTH NIGHT: A CREATIVE BLENDING

There is no unanimous critical agreement about the genre of the work as a whole or about how the two separate strands of action affect and reflect one another. (Schaeffer, p. 2)

The following genres are represented in Twelfth Night:

A.        Festive Comedy

In Christian Europe, Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany are winter solstice festivals corresponding with the ancient Roman festival of the Saturnalia, “a period of general festivity, licence for slaves, giving of presents, and lighting of candles” (Oxford Companion to Classical Literature).  The festival takes its name from the Italian agricultural deity, Saturn (Greek Chronos). In the ancient world it celebrated the sowing of crops in preparation for spring. Both the pagan and the Christian festivals commemorate the turning of the earth away from winter, towards the light and warmth of the sun.

In Shakespeare’s England Christmas revelry reached a peak on Twelfth Night, which was the last day of the holidays. Celebrations included feasting, drinking, games, jokes, riddles, music, dancing, the singing of catches and rounds, and, as in the Saturnalia and the equivalent medieval Feast of Fools, a reversal of roles between servants and masters. See E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage. Vol. I, Chapters XIII, XIV and XV (London, 1903, often reprinted) for an account of the Feast of Fools.

The term, “Twelfth Night,” does not occur in Shakespeare’s text, but What You Will, the subtitle in the First Folio [see above], captures the spirit of the Saturnalia and its Christian successors: “The sanguine Will [Shakespeare] gives us What You Will” (Bloom 229). In 1958 L. G. Salingar wrote that “the thematic key” to Twelfth Night was its “imitation of a feast of misrule, when normal restraints and relationships were overthrown”:

Shakespeare’s subplot accordingly embodies a feast of misrule, or “uncivil rule,” in Olivia’s household, with Sir Toby turning night into day; there are drinking, dancing, and singing, scenes of mock wooing, a mock sword fight, and the gulling of an unpopular but powerful member of the household, with Feste mumming it as a priest and attempting a mock exorcism in the manner of the Feast of Fools…Moreover this saturnalian spirit invades the whole play. In the main plot, sister is mistaken for brother and brother for sister…. (Salingar, “The Design of Twelfth Night.” Shakespeare Quarterly 9 (1958): 118 (117-139))

Barber’s Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), described by Michael Dobson as “possibly the most influential book on Shakespearian comedy of the last half century” (lxxii), expounded Salingar’s insight from an anthropological perspective: “[Twelfth Night],” Barber wrote, “is filled with the zany spirit of twelfth night.”

B.        Gentle Melancholy

On the other hand, mainly through Feste, whose songs delight both his on-stage and off-stage audiences, and Antonio, whose rejection by Sebastian casts a shadow, Twelfth Night oversees the disorderly fun and “misrule” from a sweetly melancholic perspective which reminds us of the fleeting nature of youthful love and joy. The comedy’s music and dancing, feasting and romance, gender-bending and reversals of hierarchy seem all the more precious by contrast. For Shakespeare’s early audiences, Twelfth Night was not only the most boisterous day of the holidays—it was also the last. Twelfth Night‘s ending captures a feeling of the carnival being over. Tomorrow the workaday world of toil and domination, of marriage, family and responsibility, of sadness, old age and death, will regather. Ruled by rank and economics, lovers and merry-makers will return to their usual tasks—“For the rain it raineth every day.”

C.         Satire

The hidden heart of Twelfth Night lies in Shakespeare’s seriocomic rivalry with Ben Jonson, whose comedy of humours is being satirised throughout….Shakespeare generally mocks these mechanical operations of the spirit, his larger invention of the human scorns this reductiveness.  (Bloom 228)

Bloom compares the theory of the humours to popular psychology today. The humours were a fashionable interest when Shakespeare was writing Twelfth Night. He is listed as “a principal comedian” for the first performance, by the Chamberlain’s Men in 1598, of Ben Jonson’s play, Every Man in His Humour:

Medieval medicine associated physical and mental dispositions with the preponderance of certain humours in the body: blood (hot and moist), phlegm (cold and moist), yellow bile (hot and dry) and black bile (cold and dry) should blend equally in the body. Imbalance led to various kinds of distempers. The theory became more and more complex, and the most elaborate account is to be found in Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (first published 1621). By then, however, medicine had begun to discountenance the theory,
(Martin Seymour-Smith, ed. Ben Jonson. Every Man in His Humour.  London: Ernest Benn, 1966; Introduction xviii.)

In the Induction to the sequel, Every Man Out of His Humour (1600), Jonson explained in poetry the disordering effects on the psyche of the fluid properties of the four humours:

So in every human body
The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,
By reason that they flow continually
In some one part, and are not continent,
Receive the name of Humours. Now thus far
It may apply itself unto the general disposition:
As when some one peculiar quality
Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,
In their confluctions, all to run one way,
This may be truly said to be a humour.

To be specific:

• excess of blood=too much optimism;
• excess of phlegm=too much stolidity, dullness;
• excess of yellow bile=too much choler or touchiness, bad temper;
• excess of black bile=too much gloom and melancholy.

Humours, the theory of psychological excess experienced to the point of obsession, is applicable to most of the characters in Twelfth Night.

D.         Romantic Comedy

Twelfth Night dramatises the overcoming of confusions, rivalries and mistaken identities that separate two pairs of lovers: Viola and Orsino; and Olivia and Sebastian. The reported marriage between Sir Toby Belch and Maria rounds out the romantic ending. As audience and readers we need to decide which romance elements in Twelfth Night are moving, and which seem contrived to match the demands of genre.

E.        A Problem Play?

Twelfth Night is hardly a “problem play”, but cruelty and violence surfacing later in the text invite consideration:

• How will an audience respond to the gulling and imprisonment of Malvolio? Is this comedy or torture?
• Given that sea captain Antonio’s only “crime” is his love for Sebastian, how will an audience respond to Antonio’s arrest and threatened execution? (See Dobson’s comment on the hidden violence of Illyria in the study exercise above.)
• How will an audience respond, do you think, to A) Orsino’s threat to kill Cesario-Viola as Olivia’s apparently successful lover; and B) his/her consent to death: “And I, most jocund, apt and willingly/ To do you rest, a thousand deaths would die.” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 120-31). 

Bloom comments: “Orsino, not previously high in the audience’s esteem, is a criminal madman if he means this, and Viola is a masochistic ninny if she is serious….Wild with laughter, Twelfth Night is nevertheless almost always on the edge of violence” (234).

READINGS

Twelfth Night Play Summary by GradeSaver [6:44 mins]