Twelfth Night (1601)

"If music be the food of love, play on"

“Twelfth Night” is probably one of Shakespeare's best known plays so I don't intend to say too much about the plot other than to say that it features a mistaken identity and a love 'triangle' of sorts.

'Twelfth Night' features some of the best known lines in English literature but personally I found the mistaken identity device was a bit of a stretch even for twins and it simply just wasn't as funny as another comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream". However, it does have some very funny moments, particularly those involving two plotting drunken Lords, Sir Toby Belch (kinsman to Olivia) and Sir Andrew Aguecheek (a Don Quixote-esque knight) and as always you just have to sit back and admire the writing.

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” ( )

Twelfth Night and Much Ado are my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, funny and fast paced. ( )

First play read as part of Shakespeare 2020 Project. It was a bit of a tough read but I expect things will get better as I get more used to reading plays in general and Shakespeare in particular. Overall, I did enjoy it. ( )

Drama; Adult. I'd forgotten that I had read it before, so I guess it didn't make much of an impression the first time, but Shakespeare is one of those things that get better the more you read it. ( )

Twelfth Night ranks up with A Midsummer Night’s Dream when you are looking at Shakespeare’s comedies that have been produced and adapted to death. While this play about disguising your gender and falling in love and mistaken twins play have played better in he 1600s, these days there’s a lot to say about the underlying sense of homophobia, bullying, and implied transphobia of having a character dress in drag for the audience’s entertainment. Fortunately because it’s a play, there are ways of interpreting this for the stage that can alleviate some of the problematic elements.

While Twelfth Night isn’t my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, it is a familiar one. Viola and Sebastien are shipwrecked separately in a strange land. Each assumes the other is dead. Viola seeks employment with Count Orsino as a boy after being denied as a lady in waiting for Olivia, and Sebastien takes his sweet time coming to town with the wanted man Antonio. The last two acts of the play are all about confusion of identity and proclamations of love. It’s a bit unbalanced, leaning heavily into Viola’s charade for much of the early par of the book.. What’s more, I was a little bit surprised to find that Sir Toby Belch et al made up quick a lot of the scenes. Shakespeare’s comedic trios more often support the lovers than upstage them (in my interpretations).

As when any play, I found myself assessing the characters and asking myself who I’d want to play. For me, I still fall into the comedy instead of the leads – Viola is very flat and Olivia too changeable for my tastes. This comedic trio was certainly not my favorite, and even though I pinpoint Maria as the mastermind… they’re all bullies. Each of these characters spend a lot of time complaining about Olivia’s court, and go to great pains to make a fool of Malvolio… to the point where’s essentially locked up. It’s in poor tastes, especially from a mental health perspective.

All this said, I am impressed by the care taken in the language. Twelfth Night is certainly witty, for all its flaws. Sometimes, I would find a single line would make me chuckle. Even though the plot is quite predicable (all these comedies follow the same line of new people arrive + avoidable confusion and trickery = marriages galore), the language is impressive even this many years later. Because I’ve read quite a lot of Shakespeare, I don’t have much trouble with the language and some of the antiquated terms, but the Folger’s editions have wonder accompanying explanations for anyone less comfortable with the work.

As a raw piece of material, Twelfth Night is lacking sheerly due to its reliance on problematic material to produce the comedic elements. However, there are some things to be appreciated in the language of the play. It also must be noted that this play is approximately 400 years old, and as such even the problematic elements are ripe for discussion and analysis. If you haven’t experienced Twelfth Night, I would still recommend it as long as you are going in with the knowledge of how outdated the material is, just to experience Shakespeare’s witticism. It’s a short book because it’s a play, so all dialogue. I tend go into most plays with a director’s mindset, imaging the possibilities of how it could unfurl on stage. Twelfth Night is ripe with possibilities. ( )