Twelfth Night, or What You Will: A Comedy for All Seasons – Full Play Text

Keir Elam’s Arden edition perceptively reviews the performance history of Twelfth Night and includes a list of 120 staged (since 1602) and filmed (since 1910) productions taking place before 2004 (pp. 87-153). You might enjoy exploring for yourself more recent Twelfth Night riffs, such as the Andy Fickman film, She’s the Man, released by Paramount and Dreamwork Pictures on 17 March 2006; or the much praised all-male production of Twelfth Night at the new Globe, London in 2012, which was reviewed in The Guardian. 

It’s not surprising that Shakespeare’s play should have inspired creativity in others. Elam’s account and later productions confirm that performances have not always been true to the play’s only authoritative text, preserved in the First Folio (1623). Scholarly interpretations of Twelfth Night have likewise been multiple and diverse. Unlike performances they are subject to correction by new discoveries and rational dissent. In no way comprehensive, this book selects from both performances and published criticism.

OLIVIA: Smil’st thou? I sent for thee upon a sad occasion.

MALVOLIO: Sad, lady? I could be sad. This does make some obstruction in the blood, this cross-gartering, but what of that? If it please the eye of one, it is with me as the very true sonnet is: “Please one, and please all.” (Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4, lines 19-25)