Twelfth Night, or What You Will*

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]

 List of characters

Orsino is a powerful nobleman who governs here (either all of the country of Illyria or at least the country round) (1.2). As the play opens, he has been pining due to his love for the Lady Olivia.

• Sebastian, twin brother to Viola

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

Antonio rescued Sebastian from the shipwreck. He is much taken with Sebastian, and accompanies him into Illyria, although he [Antonio] is a wanted man there.

• Captain, a sea captain who helps Viola

The captain of the wrecked vessel. He helps Viola by helping her to achieve her disguise as "Cesario" 

• Valentine and Curio, gentlemen attending Orsino
• Sir Toby Belch, a kinsman of Olivia's

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

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

Lady Olivia's sour and straitlaced head servant is at odds with the rest of her household.

• Feste

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.

• Fabian

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, later called Cesario

Viola is a young woman of aristocratic birth from Messaline.  She is the play's primary protagonist. She spends the entire play, after the early shipwreck scene, disguised as a young man, "Cesario" working in the household of Orsino.  Her disquise as a man causes

most of the complications of the play. 

• Olivia, a countess

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 completely uninterested in Orsino's attempt at courtship.

• Maria, a gentlewoman in Olivia's household

Maria is unassuming, competent, kind, cynical, and clever, with a reckless streak. She and Toby have an understanding, so she can nag him about his behavior, and she worries about Feste, the jester, whom she has come to care about over the years of thier acquaintance.

• Priest, a Holy Father

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

The story

The setting of Twelfth Night is especially important to the play's romantic atmosphere. The name "Illyria" refers to 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 Twelfth Night's source plays, Plautus' Menaechmi, as a place where, as in Twelfth Night, a twin goes to look for his brother, and Shakespeare himself had mentioned Illyria before in Henry VI Part II, noting its reputation for pirates.. 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. Shakespeare often shaped his settings to fit the needs of his plots.

The Illyria of the play is, nonetheless, a surreal place where there is no elder generation interfering with the love lives of the primary characters (unlike the situation in most of Shakespeare's plays). None of the characters have any other ties preventing them from falling in love with whomever they wish, and, although Anonio describes the pirates and Illyria as "rough and inhospitable" to Sebastian in Act III, everyone seems to have an inordinate amount of leisure time to do all this falling in love.

Like so many of Shakespeare's comedies, this one centers 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. 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 Viola (dressed as a man) as an intermediary. Orsino genuinely believes Viola to be a male. Olivia, also believing Viola to be male, falls in love with the handsome and eloquent messenger. Viola, in turn, falls in love with Duke Orsino, who has regarded her as his male confidante.

 Sebastian, Viola's twin brother,  has not drowned in the shipwreck (as Viola at first had thought), and when he arrives on the scene, confusion ensues. Mistaking Sebastian for Viola, Olivia asks him to marry her;  and they are secretly married by a priest. Finally, when both of the twins appear in the presence of both Olivia and Duke Orsino, there is amazement 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 marriages to be made between Duke Orsino and Viola, and between Toby and Maria,  although these marriages are never seen on the stage.

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 late father's favorite fool, Feste. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew disturb the peace of their lady's house by keeping late hours, drinking heavily,  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 Maria writes a letter in Olivia's hand, asking Malvolio to do these things: to wear yellow stockings cross-gartered, to be rude to the rest of the servants, and to smile under 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 because he is attempting to fulfill all the things that were asked of him in the letter. Olivia leaves Malvolio to the contrivances of the group above. He is locked up in a dungeon-like room, with a slit for light. Feste visits him twice, first disguised as the priest, then, again, as himself. Malvolio rants and weeps at his mistreatment, and his part in the play ends as he vows revenge on all those who have done him such injustice.  Those who have treated him badly feel that he deserved the way he was treated because of his prudish and arrogant ways.

Themes

Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, such as Viola and Feste. Shakespeare uses disguise 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.

The theme of a woman dressing as a man and then finding another woman falling in love with her had occured 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 humorously referenced 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, as the behaviour of Sir Toby and Feste towards Malvolio becomes increasingly cruel towards the end. 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, but the audience is left to wonder what may happen because this situation is not resolved at the end of the play.

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]

”

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.

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 verision 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.  [This is the film which is regularly viewed in Mrs. Cox's Shakespeare class.]

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 with The Taming of the Shrew,  as the film O does with Othello, and as Get Over It does with A Midsummer Night's Dream).   She's the Man 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. As usual in such extreme modernizations,  very little of the Shakespearean dialogue is maintained, and these films can more correctly be called "based upon" Shakespeare-- rather than viewed as actual versions of the Shakespearean plays mentioned.

The climax of the film Shakespeare in Love dramatises a fictional inspiration for Twelfth Night.

 Japanese Anime Inspired By Twelfth Night

A recent surge of Japanese Anime since the late 1990's seems to draw thematic inspiration from the story of Twelfth Night, wherein the protagonist infiltrates an authoritarian society by adopting the persona of the opposite gender. Though, unlike Twelfth Night, this character is more often than not an androgynously beautiful male masquerading as a woman.

The male-protagonists of these anime, such as Amawa Hibiki (Teacher) of I My Me-Strawberry Eggs and Miyanokoji Mizuho (Student) of Otome wa Boku ni Koishiteru traverse gender boundaries not only in their masqueraded physicality, but also in their kindness, warmth and sensitivity; qualities not generally attributed with the male sex in Japanese youth culture. These animes thematically explore the utopian possibilities of a society where love and kindness is unbound by the stringent social expectations of gender.

The decidedly bleak (if not soberingly realistic) ending of  I My Me-Strawberry Eggs, in which love does not conquer prejudices, and results in the social-ruin of the well-meaning teacher, indirectly yet scathingly criticizes the hypocrisy of extremist feminism, which lionizes feminine qualities while simultaneously denying men the possibilities of adopting such virtues.

Anime such as Ouran High School Host club returns to the Twelfth Night roots with a female protagonist, usually "more cute/handsome than beautiful", masquerading as a boy. However, such scenarios are usually less socially-critical than the male-to-female counterparts, with more focus on comedy derived from the physical awkwardness of the girl in question, as well as the embarrasment of the male protagonists who unwittingly fall for "him."

End Notes:  These notes refer to pages in  the section titled "References For This Article", cited below.

1. ^ Halliday, p. 71.
2. ^ Hotson
3. ^ Halliday, p. 505.
4. ^ Qtd. in Smith, 2001, p. 2
5. ^ Vahimagi, p.8

References for this article:  The following are the references used by the original creators of this webpage. This is the equivalent of their Works Cited Page. You may not use these references in my class unless you have personally had physical or electronic contact with these books. You can order these books from our MC library using an interlibrary loan form.  They will usually arrive within 2-3 weeks. --Mrs. Cox

• 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.

External links

• Twelfth Night: A Study Guide
• Lesson plans for Twelfth Night at Web English Teacher
• [1] Listen to "O Mistress Mine" and other works