Twelfth Night, or What You Will
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Twelfth Night, or What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, named after the Twelfth Night holiday of the Christmas season. It was probably written in 1600 to 1601; the name of its male lead, Orsino, was probably suggested by that of Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, an Italian nobleman who visited London in the winter of 1600 to 1601.[1]
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[edit] Performance and publication
Twelfth Night was probably performed at Candlemas, 2 February 1602, which was then the culmination of the long winter feast, at Middle Temple Hall, London by Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It may have been performed earlier as well, before the Court at Whitehall Palace on Twelfth Night (5 January) of 1601.[2] Twelfth Night was also performed at Court on Easter Monday, 6 April 1618, and again at Candlemas in 1623.
The play was not printed until its inclusion in the First Folio in 1623.
The play was also one of the earliest Shakespearean works acted at the start of the Restoration; Sir William Davenant's adaptation was staged in 1661, with Thomas Betterton in the role of Sir Toby Belch. Samuel Pepys thought it "a silly play", but saw it three times anyway during the period of his diary (on 11 September 1661, 6 January 1663, and 20 January 1669). Another adaptation, Love Betray'd, or, The Agreeable Disappointment, was acted at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1703.[3]
[edit] List of characters
- Orsino, Duke (or Count) of Illyria
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- Orsino is a powerful nobleman who governs here (either all of Illyria or at least the country round) (1.2). As the play opens, he has been pining for the Lady Olivia.
- Sebastian, twin brother to Viola
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- When Sebastian arrives in Illyria he is constantly mistaken for his sister Viola, who has been going about disguised as a man.
- Antonio, captain, a friend to Sebastian
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- Antonio rescued Sebastian from the shipwreck. He is much taken with Sebastian, and accompanies him into Illyria, although he is a wanted man there.
- Captain, a sea captain who helps Viola
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- The captain of the wrecked vessel. He helps Viola by getting her — in her disguise as "Cesario" — to Orsino's court.
- Valentine and Curio, gentlemen attending Orsino
- Sir Toby Belch, a kinsman of Olivia's
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- Sir Toby is related to Olivia, probably her uncle ("what a plague means my niece..." (1.3)). She puts up with his drinking and rowdy behavior, but does not really care for it.
- Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a companion of Sir Toby's
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- A foolish knight from the country who is staying with Toby in hopes of wooing Olivia, but in reality is wasting his money in incessant revelry promoted by Sir Toby.
- Malvolio, steward to Olivia
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- Lady Olivia's sour and straitlaced head servant who is at odds with the rest of her household.
- Feste
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- Feste is a jester in Olivia's household. The Fool moves between Olivia's and Orsino's homes, making jokes, singing songs, and cadging coins from those that have them. His name is Latin based, and means trick, practical joke, hoax, or to play a joke on somebody.
- Fabian
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- Fabian is attached to Olivia's household in some unspecified capacity. He comes in where we expect Feste (2.5), and so seems an afterthought. But he develops as a character as the play goes on.
- Viola, twin sister to Sebastian. She is later called Cesario
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- Viola is a young woman of aristocratic birth from Messaline, and the play's primary protagonist. She spends the entire play, after the early shipwreck scene, disguised as a young man, "Cesario".
- Olivia, a countess
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- Olivia's father and brother have recently died, so she is mistress of her grand house and of whatever else an unattached countess can command. She is in mourning for her brother as the play opens, and uninterested in Orsino's attempt at courtship.
- Maria, a gentlewoman in Olivia's household
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- Maria is competent, kind, cynical, spirited, and loyal. Though she works for the Lady Olivia, she has come to love Toby over the years, and leads he and Feste in their revenge on Malvolio.
- Priest, a Holy Father
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- The Priest is a minor character who performs the wedding ceremony in the last scene of the play.
- Musicians, Lords, Sailors, Officers, and other attendants
[edit] The story
Illyria, the setting of Twelfth Night, is especially important to the play's romantic atmosphere. It is an ancient region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea covering parts of modern Croatia, Montenegro and Albania. This Illyria is mentioned in one of source plays for Twelfth Night, Plautus's Menæchmi, as a place where, as in Twelfth Night, a twin went looking for his brother. Shakespeare himself mentioned it previously, in Henry VI, Part II, noting its reputation for pirates — a problem it shared with Twelfth Night's Illyria. Although it is sometimes argued that the play's Illyria is some kind of imaginary fantasy land, it is equally likely that Shakespeare had the real Illyria in mind.
The Illyria of the play is nonetheless a surreal place where the elder generation does not interfere with the love lives of the primary characters (unlike most of Shakespeare's plays), none of the characters have any other ties preventing them from falling in love with whomever they wish, and — in spite of the pirates and Illyria being described as "rough and inhospitable" to the unwary by Antonio to Sebastian in Act III — everyone seems to have an inordinate amount of leisure time to do all this falling in love. The entire play takes place here, and the outside world is seldom mentioned.
Like so many of Shakespeare's comedies, this one centres on mistaken identity. The leading character, Viola, is shipwrecked on the shores of Illyria during the opening scenes. She loses contact with her twin brother, Sebastian, whom she believes dead. Dressed as a man and masquerading as a young page under the name Cesario, she enters the service of Duke Orsino. Orsino is in love with the bereaved Lady Olivia, whose brother has recently died, and decides to use "Cesario" as an intermediary. Olivia, believing Viola to be a man, falls in love with this handsome and eloquent messenger. Viola, in turn, falls in love with the Duke, who also believes Viola is a man, and regards her as his confidante.
When Sebastian arrives on the scene, confusion ensues. Mistaking him for Viola, Olivia asks him to marry her, and they are secretly married by a priest. Finally, when the twins appear in the presence of both Olivia and the Duke, there is more wonder and awe at their similarity, at which point Viola reveals she is really a female and that Sebastian is her lost twin brother. The play ends in a declaration of marriage between the Duke and Viola, Toby and Maria, and Olivia and Sebastian, though the marriage is never actually seen.
Much of the play is taken up with the comic subplot, in which several characters conspire to make Olivia's pompous head steward, Malvolio, believe that the lady Olivia wishes to marry him. It involves Olivia's uncle, Sir Toby Belch; her would-be suitor, a silly squire named Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek; her servants Maria and Fabian; and her father's favorite fool, Feste. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew disturb the peace of their lady's house by keeping late hours and perpetually singing catches at the very top of their voices.
Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew Ague-Cheek, and company convince Malvolio that Olivia is secretly in love with him, and write a letter in Olivia's hand, asking Malvolio to wear yellow stockings cross-gartered, be rude to the rest of the servants, and to smile in all circumstances. Olivia, saddened by Viola's attitude to her, asks for her chief steward, and is shocked by a Malvolio who has seemingly lost his mind. She leaves him to the contrivances of his tormentors. He is locked up in a room, with a slit for light. Feste visits him, once disguised as the priest, and again as himself.
[edit] Themes
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Many characters in Twelfth Night, such as Viola and Feste, assume disguises. Shakespeare uses this ploy to raise questions about human identity, and whether such classifications as gender and class status are fixed entities or can be altered with a simple shift of clothes.
Then again, the theme of a woman dressing as a man, and then finding another woman falling in love with her, had occurred before in Shakespeare's As You Like It. In Elizabethan times, the parts of women in plays were performed by young men. It was not until the reign of Charles II that woman appeared on stage. This is indicated in As You Like It when Rosalind, the female lead, states in her closing speech: "If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards, that pleased me".
Although this is one of Shakespeare's most popular and funniest comedies, it has a dark side. The behaviour of Sir Toby and Feste towards Malvolio becomes increasingly cruel. Malvolio is locked in a dungeon for alleged madness, and forced to swear his submission to the heretical doctrines of Pythagoras. Malvolio departs in a bad humour, vowing revenge "on the whole pack of you". Orsino dispatches several servants to attempt to placate him.
[edit] The play on the stage
The earliest known performance took place at Middle Temple Hall, one of the Inns of Court, on Candlemas night, 2 February 1602. The only record of the performance is an entry in the diary of the law student John Manningham, who wrote:
| “ | At our feast we had a play called "Twelve Night, or What You Will", much like "The Comedy of Errors" or "Menaechmi" in Plautus, but most like and near to that in Italian called "Inganni".
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 term telling him what she liked best in him and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc. and then, when he came to practice, making him believe they took him for mad.[4] |
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Clearly, Manningham enjoyed the Malvolio story most of all, and noted the play's similarity with Shakespeare's earlier play, as well as its relationship with one of its sources, the Inganni plays.
After holding the stage only in the adaptations in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the original Shakespearean text of Tweflth Night was revived in 1741, in a production at Drury Lane. In 1820 an operatic version by Frederic Reynolds was staged, with music composed by Henry Bishop. Influential productions were staged in 1912, by Harley Granville-Barker, and in 1916, at the Old Vic.
When the play was first performed, all female parts were played by men or boys, but it has been the practice for some centuries now to cast women or girls in the female parts in all plays. The company of Shakespeare's Globe, London, has produced many notable, highly popular all-male performances, and a highlight of their 2002 season was Twelfth Night, with the Globe's artistic director Mark Rylance playing the part of Olivia. This season was preceded, in February, by a performance of the play by the same company at Middle Temple Hall, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the play's premiere, at the same venue.
Lilian Baylis reopened the long-dormant Sadler's Wells Theatre in 1931 with a notable production of the play starring Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby and John Gielgud as Malvolio. Gielgud directed a production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre with Laurence Olivier as Malvolio and Vivian Leigh playing both Viola and Sebastian in 1955. The longest running Broadway production by far was Margaret Webster's 1941 staging starring Maurice Evans as Malvolio and Helen Hayes as Viola. It ran for 129 performances, more than twice as long as any other Broadway production.
[edit] Twelfth Night in film and television
- See also Shakespeare on screen (Twelfth Night).
In 1910, Vitagraph Studios released the silent short adaptation Twelfth Night starring actors Florence Turner, Julia Swayne Gordon and Marin Sais.
On May 14, 1937, the BBC Television Service in London broadcast a thirty-minute excerpt of the play, the first known instance of a work of Shakespeare being performed on television. Produced for the new medium by George More O'Ferrall, the production is also notable for having featured a young actress who would later go on to win an Academy Award – Greer Garson. As the performance was transmitted live from the BBC's studios at Alexandra Palace and the technology to record television programmes did not at the time exist, no visual record survives other than still photographs.[5]
The entire play was produced for television in 1939, directed by Michel Saint-Denis and starring another future Oscar-winner, Peggy Ashcroft. The part of Sir Toby Belch was taken by a young George Devine.
Another version for UK television was produced in 1969, directed by John Sichel and John Dexter. The production featured Joan Plowright as Viola and Sebastian, Alec Guinness as Malvolio, Ralph Richardson as Sir Toby Belch and Tommy Steele as an unusually prominent Feste.
The 1996 film adapted and directed by Trevor Nunn and set in the 19th century, stars Imogen Stubbs as Viola, Helena Bonham Carter as Olivia and Toby Stephens as Duke Orsino. The film also features Mel Smith as Sir Toby, Richard E. Grant as Sir Andrew, Ben Kingsley as Feste, Imelda Staunton as Maria and Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio.
A 2003 telemovie adapted and directed by Tim Supple is set in the present day. It features David Troughton as Sir Toby, and is notable for its multi-ethnic cast including Parminder Nagra as Viola. Its portrayal of Viola and Sebastian's arrival in Illyria is reminiscent of news footage of asylum seekers.
The 2006 film She's the Man modernises the story as a contemporary teenage comedy (as 10 Things I Hate about You does to The Taming of the Shrew, O does to Othello, and Get Over It does to A Midsummer Night's Dream). It is set in a prep school named Illyria and incorporates the names of the play's major characters (for example, "Duke Orsino" becomes simply "Duke" and his last name is Orsino.) The pizza place in it is named "Cesario's" and there are many references in the movie to minor characters in Twelfth Night, such as Sir Toby, Feste, Valentine, and Malvolio.
The climax of the film Shakespeare in Love dramatises a fictional inspiration for Twelfth Night.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Twelfth Night, Elizabeth Story Donno, ed. Cambridge 1985,2003. (New Cambridge Shakespeare)
- Halliday, F. E., A Shakespeare Companion 1564-1964, Baltimore, Penguin, 1964
- Hotson, Leslie, The First Night of Twelfth Night, London, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954.
- Twelfth Night, M. M. Mahood, ed. Penguin 1968, 1995. (New Penguin Shakespeare)
- Pennington, Michael, Twelfth Night: a user's guide. New York, 2000.
- Smith, Bruce R., Twelfth Night: Texts and Contexts. New York: Bedford St Martin's, 2001
- Vahimagi, Tise. British Television: An Illustrated Guide. Oxford. Oxford University Press / British Film Institute. 1994. ISBN 0-19-818336-4.
[edit] External links
- Twelfth Night on IBDb.com
- Twelfth Night: A Study Guide
- Searchable Twelfth Night Etext Unattributed edited version: bare bones, but with a long summary that is essentially a scene-dump.
- Twelfe Night A cumbersome dump of the Folio version, uncommented.
- Twelfth Night Another dump of the Folio, in a better format. It is not necessarily accurate, though Project Gutenberg does try to enlist proofreaders.
- Lesson plans for Twelfth Night at Web English Teacher
- Audio of "O Mistress Mine" and other works
