One of Shakespeare’s best-loved comedies, encompassing a formidable range of moods and dramatic styles, Twelfth Night is first mentioned in the diary of a law student, John *Manningham, who saw it performed in the hall of Middle Temple on 2 February 1602. The play was probably at most a few months old at the time, as a number of details in the text suggest. Maria mentions ‘the new map with the augmentation of the Indies’ (3.2.74–5), usually identified as one first published in Richard *Hakluyt’s Voyages in 1599; 2.3 quotes from a number of songs first published in 1600 (in Robert *Jones’s First Book of Songs and Airs); while Feste’s view that the phrase ‘out of my element’ is ‘overworn’ (3.1.57–8) alludes to a running joke against the expression in Thomas *Dekker’s Satiromastix, premièred by Shakespeare’s company in 1601. The *Chamberlain’s Men performed an unnamed play on Twelfth Night in 1601 before Elizabeth’s court and her guest of honour Don Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano: despite Leslie *Hotson’s strenuous arguments, this is unlikely to have been Twelfth Night, though Shakespeare’s choice of the name Orsino for the play’s duke when he wrote his play later in 1601 may have been influenced by recollections of the occasion.
Text: The play was first printed in the *Folio in 1623, in a good text derived from a literary transcript of the play prepared by a scribe (possibly especially for this purpose). The view that the text shows signs of post-performance revision is no longer widely accepted.
Sources: Two or even three of the play’s sources were recognized very early: Manningham commented that the play was ‘much like the Comedy of Errors or Menaechmi in Plautus, but most like…that in Italian called Inganni’. The resemblances between Twelfth Night and *Plautus’ Menaechmi, the source for Shakespeare’s earlier play about identical *twins, are clear (The Comedy of Errors similarly sets its comedy of mistaken identity within a poignant framework of separation and reunion), though its debts to an Italian play are more complicated. By Inganni, Manningham meant the anonymous Gl’ingannati (The Deceived, 1531), which indeed provided the ultimate source for the relationships between the characters whom Shakespeare rechristened Orsino, Olivia, Viola, and Sebastian. Shakespeare, however, probably knew Gl’ingannati only at second or third hand, via prose versions in *Bandello’s Novelle (1554) and *Belleforest’s Histoires tragiques (1571) which were themselves adapted by Barnabe *Rich in ‘Apollonius and Silla’, the second story in his Farewell to Military Profession (1581). The sub-plot of the gulled steward, however, has no such literary source, and attempts to identify Malvolio as a hostile portrait of a particular Elizabethan courtier have been uniformly unconvincing.
Synopsis: 1.1 Orsino, duke of *Illyria, listens to music as he languishes for the love of Countess Olivia: when Valentine reports that Olivia refuses his suit, vowing to mourn her dead brother for seven years, he comforts himself with the reflection that a woman capable of such emotion for a mere brother will in due course love passionately.
1.2 Viola, washed up in Illyria after a shipwreck in which she fears her twin brother Sebastian has perished, learns from the ship’s Captain of Olivia’s vow and Orsino’s suit: with his help she intends to disguise herself as a eunuch and enter Orsino’s service.
1.3 At Olivia’s house her dissolute uncle Sir Toby Belch detains the rich but foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek, another hopeful suitor to Olivia: Sir Andrew’s ineptitude is demonstrated by his incompetent repartee with the witty servant Maria.
1.4 Viola, disguised as ‘Cesario’, has become such a favourite of Orsino that he sends her to court Olivia on his behalf, an errand she accepts reluctantly, confessing in an aside that she herself loves Orsino.
1.5 The clown Feste has incurred Olivia’s displeasure by a long absence, but contrives to regain her favour by riddling that she is more foolish than he for mourning that her brother is in Heaven. Her steward Malvolio, however, remains Feste’s adversary, and is gently rebuked by Olivia for his ungenerosity of spirit. Olivia sends Feste to look after Sir Toby, who is already drunk. Viola, after refusing to be put off by a baffled Malvolio, is eventually admitted to Maria and Olivia: besting Maria’s wit, she secures a private interview with Olivia, whom she rebukes for her pride, though she acknowledges her beauty. Olivia dismisses Orsino’s suit but grows increasingly interested in ‘Cesario’, who she hopes will come again: after Viola leaves, she sends Malvolio after her with a ring she claims was left as an unwanted gift from Orsino.
2.1 Sebastian tells his devoted friend Antonio of Viola, whom he believes to have drowned. Antonio, though he has mortal enemies at Orsino’s court, decides to follow Sebastian there.
2.2 Malvolio gives Viola the ring Olivia claimed she had left as a present. Alone, Viola realizes that Olivia has fallen in love with Cesario, and wonders how this complicated situation will resolve itself.
2.3 After midnight, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew have Feste sing a song, ‘O mistress mine’, and join him in singing catches: Maria warns them they are too loud, and Malvolio arrives to rebuke them for disturbing the household, threatening Sir Toby that Olivia’s displeasure may result in his banishment from it. Sir Toby is affronted at this check from a mere servant, and, after Malvolio leaves, Maria, with his eager encouragement, plots revenge: she will forge a letter from Olivia to trick the steward into thinking his mistress is in love with him.
2.4 Orsino speaks of love with Viola: they listen to Feste sing ‘Come away, come away death’. Defending women against the charge of being less constant than men, Viola speaks of her own feelings and predicament under cover of describing a sister who pined away through concealing her love. Orsino sends her again to woo Olivia.
2.5 Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and another servant, Fabian, hide in the garden and watch Malvolio approach the forged letter Maria has placed in his path. Malvolio is already imagining becoming Count through marriage to Olivia and lecturing Sir Toby when he finds it. Despite the letter’s obscure anagram of ‘M.O.A.I.’ and its refusal actually to name either its addressee or its feigned author, its purport is clear: a confession of love from Olivia in which she urges Malvolio to spurn Sir Toby, smile, and wear yellow stockings, cross-gartered. Malvolio, completely taken in, is overjoyed, and hastens to comply. Maria hurries her confederates towards Olivia to watch for Malvolio’s transformation.
3.1 Viola, also on her way to Olivia, meets Feste, who wittily begs money: she also meets Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, who is impressed with the courtliness with which Viola greets Olivia. When they are alone, Olivia confesses her love: when Viola says she can only pity her, Olivia feigns that she might yet love Orsino, in the hopes of inducing Viola to come again on his behalf.
3.2 Sir Andrew, about to leave on the grounds that Olivia obviously prefers Cesario to himself, is persuaded by Sir Toby and Fabian that Olivia is deliberately offering him a chance of proving his valour, and he leaves to write a challenge to Cesario. Maria fetches the others to see Malvolio, who has already changed his stockings.
3.3 Antonio, in danger because of his former participation in a sea-fight in which he helped to plunder Orsino’s galleys, gives the sightseeing Sebastian his purse, arranging to meet him discreetly at an inn later.
3.4 Olivia has sent after Viola once more, but is distracted from her own affairs by the appearance of the cross-gartered Malvolio, whose smiling quotations from the forged letter convince his mistress he has lost his wits. After she leaves to see Viola, Sir Toby, Fabian, and Maria speak to Malvolio as if they believe he is possessed: he leaves, still confident of Olivia’s love. Sir Andrew has written an incompetent and cowardly challenge for Cesario, which Sir Toby resolves not to deliver, preferring to challenge Cesario in person. Olivia and Viola enter, Viola once more asking Olivia to bestow her love on Orsino rather than on herself: after Olivia’s departure, Sir Toby tells Viola that Sir Andrew means to duel with her, convincing Viola of his implacable and expert rage. Sir Toby then persuades Sir Andrew that Viola is equally furious and deadly: their mutually terrified sword-fight, however, is interrupted by the arrival of Antonio, who mistakes Viola for Sebastian. Antonio is about to fight with Sir Toby when officers arrive to arrest the newcomer: he asks Viola for the return of his purse, and is shocked when she denies receiving it, leaving heartbroken for prison. Viola begins to hope her brother may still be alive. Sir Andrew, now convinced of Viola’s cowardice, follows her to renew his challenge.
4.1 Sebastian meets Feste, who is offended not to be recognized by him: Sir Andrew arrives and strikes Sebastian, who is quick to avenge the blow, and finds himself at drawn swords with Sir Toby when Olivia arrives and similarly takes Sebastian for Cesario. Sebastian is at once puzzled and delighted by her tender attention, and departs with her.
4.2 Malvolio, presumed mad, is locked up in darkness: Feste pretends to be Sir Topas, a curate sent to examine his alleged demonic possession, but eventually agrees to bring Malvolio ink, paper, and a light that he may write to Olivia.
4.3 Sebastian, though still bewildered, is delighted by Olivia’s love, and agrees to go with her and a priest to be married.
5.1 Feste refuses to let Fabian see the letter he has promised to give Olivia from Malvolio, and begs money from Orsino, who arrives with Viola and other attendants. Antonio is brought before them: Orsino remembers his valour despite regarding him as a pirate, but counters his renewed accusations of falsehood against Viola by witnessing that Viola has been at his court for the last three months rather than in Antonio’s company as he alleges. This discussion is cut short by the arrival of Olivia. Orsino says he knows his rightful place in her heart has been usurped by Cesario, whom he threatens to kill: when Viola promises she loves Orsino above all else, and means to leave with him come what may, Olivia produces the priest, who bears witness that Cesario and Olivia are married. Sir Andrew arrives, followed by Sir Toby, who has been wounded in a fight they have provoked with Sebastian: they are shocked to find Viola there. Sebastian now arrives, to apologize to his newly married wife for hurting her kinsman: as the onlookers marvel at seeing him and Viola at once, he is at first overjoyed to see Antonio again before he sees his disguised sister. The twins tentatively question one another to confirm each other’s identities: Viola explains that if her male clothes hinder his recognition, she can reclaim her own from the Sea Captain. It becomes clear how Olivia has come to marry Sebastian after falling in love with Cesario, and Orsino realizes that Viola, disguised, has often confessed that she loves him. The Sea Captain who has her clothes, however, has been arrested at Malvolio’s suit, so Malvolio is summoned: meanwhile Fabian reads Olivia his evidently sane letter (replacing Feste, who insists on reading it in too mad a voice). Orsino agrees to marry Viola in a double celebration at Olivia’s house. Malvolio arrives and confronts Olivia with the letter he found in the garden: she explains that it is forged, and Fabian and Feste confess their trick (Fabian revealing that Sir Toby has married Maria as a reward for her wit, Feste saying he took part in order to avenge Malvolio’s criticism of his fooling). Malvolio leaves, vowing revenge on them all. Orsino sends after him, in order that Viola’s female clothes can be retrieved for her wedding: meanwhile he will continue to call her Cesario. Feste is left alone to sing a song as an epilogue, ‘When that I was and a little tiny boy’.
Artistic features: Rich in songs—provided for Robert *Armin, the original Feste, who had replaced the less intellectual and melodious fool Will *Kempe in 1599—and peopled by characters who are given to reflecting eloquently but passively on their imprisonment within their own and one another’s fantasies, Twelfth Night is the most lyrical of the mature comedies. At the close of its at once atrociously cruel and exquisitely funny sub-plot, one of Shakespeare’s most Jonsonian, even the puritanical Malvolio rises to the dignity of blank verse.
Critical history: Although apparently highly regarded in Shakespeare’s time and thereafter—Leonard *Digges’s dedicatory verse in Benson’s 1640 edition of Shakespeare’s poems includes the couplet ‘The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full | To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull’—the play fell from favour for 80 years after the Restoration, its Italianate intrigues and fancies dismissed as unrealistic. As late as 1765 Dr *Johnson, who called the play ‘elegant and easy, and in some of the lighter scenes exquisitely humorous’, objected that the winding-up of the main plot ‘wants credibility and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no true picture of life’. The play was valued more highly by *Romantic critics such as *Schlegel, who singled out the importance of both music and the concept of ‘fancy’ to the play in his Course of Lectures on Dramatic Literature (1809–11), while *Hazlitt considered it ‘one of the most delightful of Shakespeare’s comedies…perhaps too good-natured for comedy’. In the 19th century Viola, the most acceptably bashful and passive of Shakespeare’s comic heroines, was a favourite of moralist critics, and her imaginary youth is described with particular enthusiasm in Mary Cowden *Clarke’s The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (1850–1). In academic criticism she has often been upstaged, however, by two other characters. Charles *Lamb was one of the first commentators to speak in favour of Malvolio, and Lamb’s contemporaries also singled out another figure often seen as providing the play’s keynote, Feste, later the subject of an important essay by A. C. *Bradley. Twentieth-century criticism has treated both of these characters ever more seriously, as perceptions of the play’s happy comedy have increasingly given place to a sense of its social tensions and sexual undercurrents: recent discussions have related it to the *‘problem plays’ as often as to what might otherwise seem its more natural companion piece, As You Like It. Malvolio has been viewed as a comic antagonist whose potentially tragic dignity approaches that of Shylock: Feste has been identified as a detached, ironic commentator on the play whose freelance status and penchant for puns mirror the elusiveness of language and desire themselves. Since the Second World War Twelfth Night has provided fertile ground for anthropologically inclined critics who have pursued its title’s allusion to seasonal rituals of misrule and inversion, and its intrigues have been equally attractive to *Marxists interested in the social cross-dressing of Malvolio and to *feminists and queer theorists interested in the gender cross-dressing of Viola and the hints of homoeroticism which inform her relations with Orsino and Olivia, not to mention Antonio’s adoration of Sebastian.
Stage history: A similar trajectory—from unfashionably whimsical trifle to happy romantic comedy to bitter-sweet drama of social and sexual identity—informs Twelfth Night’s post-Restoration stage history. The play was evidently popular down to the Civil War, as Digges’s poem suggests: a court performance is recorded in 1622 as ‘Malvolio’ (a title by which *Charles I would also call the play, in a note on the contents page of his copy of the Folio). Doubtless remembering the play’s earlier success in court circles, *Davenant revived it in the early 1660s, the role of Viola now transformed by the arrival of professional actresses into a breeches part, but the play was laid aside after 1669, when *Pepys, who had earlier dismissed it as ‘but a silly play’, described it as ‘one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage’. The extent to which its lyricism had gone out of fashion is vividly suggested by a short-lived, largely prose adaptation, Love Betrayed; or, The Agreeable Disappointment (1703), which, as its author William Burnaby candidly admitted in a preface, rejected most of Shakespeare’s poetry and much of his plotting entirely: ‘Part of the tale of this play, I took from Shakespeare, and about fifty of his lines.’ The original was restored, however, in 1741, performed at Drury Lane by the company who revived The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It during the same season: Charles *Macklin was Malvolio, Hannah *Pritchard played Viola, and Kitty *Clive Olivia. Since then, the play’s popularity has never waned, with the role of Malvolio attracting star actors and actor-managers from Richard Yates through Samuel *Phelps, Henry *Irving, and Beerbohm *Tree down to Donald *Wolfit, Laurence *Olivier, and Donald *Sinden. Viola has been an equally important role for actresses (her soliloquy in 2.2, ‘I left no ring with her. What means this lady?’, has long been the most familiar of audition pieces), offering in the 18th and 19th centuries an irresistible combination of professed modesty with the titillation provided by male costume’s display of her figure. Dorothea *Jordan was a sensation in the 1790s, and Leigh *Hunt’s account of the part is dominated by his attention to Ann Maria Tree’s limbs: ‘It is impossible not to be struck…with a leg like this. It is fit for a statue: still fitter for where it is.’ Equally appealing successors in the part included Charlotte *Cushman, Ada *Rehan, and Ellen *Terry. Increasing decorative elaboration in the 19th century led to frequent transpositions of scenes, a tendency which culminated in Beerbohm Tree’s 1901 production, where most of the scenes in Olivia’s garden had to be run consecutively, as its set’s real grass and fountains could not be changed during the performance. The way forward, however, was more accurately pointed by Harley *Granville-Barker’s revival at the Savoy in 1912: its styling was influenced by William *Poel’s experiments with neo-Elizabethan open stages, its Malvolio, Henry Ainley, was heartbreakingly overwrought in the prison scene, and its Feste, Hayden Coffin, was the most melancholy for many years. Since then the play’s ever more frequent productions have, in general, become progressively more autumnal: major revivals have included Tyrone *Guthrie’s (1937, with Olivier as Sir Toby, Alec *Guinness as Sir Andrew, and Jessica Tandy confusingly doubling Viola and Sebastian), John *Gielgud’s (1955, with Olivier as Malvolio and Vivien *Leigh as Viola), and John *Barton’s delicately Elizabethan RSC production of 1969 (with Judi *Dench as Viola). Two memorable productions of the 1980s instructively paralleled contemporary trends in criticism: Ariane *Mnouchkine staged an exotic, ambiguous Illyria in her Théâtre du Soleil production of 1982, while *Cheek by Jowl’s 1985 touring production stressed the play’s homoeroticism, eventually pairing off Feste with Antonio.
Michael Dobson
On the screen: The earliest film of Twelfth Night was a silent version made in America in 1910. No fewer than five television versions have been made for the BBC, culminating in the 1980 production with Alec McCowen as Malvolio and Felicity Kendal as Viola. An American TV production (1957) with Maurice *Evans, Denholm Elliott, and Max Adrian was well received. Especially memorable was John Dexter’s production for British commercial television (1970) with Alec Guinness (Malvolio), Tommy Steele (Feste), Ralph *Richardson (Sir Toby Belch), and Joan Plowright (Viola). A brooding production directed by Judi *Dench for Kenneth *Branagh’s Renaissance Theatre Company, with music by Paul McCartney, is also preserved on videotape, directed by Paul Kafno (1990). Only two cinema films provide a full treatment of the play. The 1955 Russian film directed by Yakow Fried balances boisterous comedy with subtle characterization, and Trevor *Nunn’s Twelfth Night (1996), filmed in Cornwall, stresses visually the play’s recurrent sea imagery. Nunn’s strong cast—including Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio, Imogen Stubbs as Viola, and Ben *Kingsley as Feste—capture both the play’s poignancy and its fun.
Anthony Davies