Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Written around 1600 when Shakespeare was also writing Hamlet. The elderly Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne. No one knew who would succeed her.
The Feast of Twelfth Night marked the end of Christmas (on 5 or 6 of January) with a day of topsy turviness when people dressed up, held masked balls and one lucky person became Lord of Misrule for the day and could ask everyone to do things they wouldn’t normally do.
Shakespeare’s company had recently moved into the Globe Playhouse, south of the River Thames.
One early performance of Twelfth Night took place on 2 February (Candlemas) 1601-2 at the hall of the Middle Temple. John Manningham, a young lawyer studying there, recorded he thought the play was like Latin or Italian comedy and noted down the subtitle, ‘What You Will’.
In general, the Puritans in London disapproved of the playhouses and wanted them closed down.
The girl boy twins Viola and Sebastian perhaps connect with Shakespeare’s own girl boy twins, Judith and Hamnett (the latter died in 1596, aged 11).
When Shakespeare died in 1616, Twelfth Night had not been published. Shakespeare wanted people to see his plays in the playhouse rather than read them.

Today Twelfth Night is perhaps, Shakespeare’s queerest play, and can be performed as engaging with gender issues, sexual preferences and a range of identity politics.
In Shakespeare’s day audiences were unlikely to see the play as the tragedy of Malvolio, but Twelfth Night has often been performed as including very bleak moments, especially towards the end of Malvolio’s story. How bleak do you think Malvolio’s final line should be?
The staging of 4.2., Malvolio in the ‘dark house’ is critical in determining the tone of a production. Sometimes in modern productions he is being tortured. How is the ‘dark house’ presented in productions you have seen? How does this shift the overall meaning of the play?
Many aspects of production can shade or even change the meaning of the play in performance such as music, setting, costume, direction and even the delivery of a particular line. How is music used to affect the overall mood in productions you have seen? What kind of music is Orsino listening to at the beginning? What kind of music is used for Feste’s final song?

Watch two filmed performances of Twelfth Night and ask:
How much sympathy are the two productions asking for in relation to Malvolio at different stages in the play?
How is the ‘dark house’ staged?
How do costume, staging and music affect how you feel about Malvolio in the final scene?
How is Antonio treated at the end?
How does Olivia respond when she finds out she has married Sebastian not Cesario?
Are Viola and Sebastian refugees?

Twelfth Night has been popular on the stage for five hundred years.
It has been set in Elizabethan times, in modern dress, in nineteenth century costume and in a way that suggests Malvolio exits in the final scene ready to start the English Civil War (when the Puritans defeated King Charles I and his mainly aristocratic Cavaliers; Charles I was executed in January 1649).
Seeing Twelfth Night as the idea of the Tragedy of Malvolio became more popular towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Olivia’s speech ‘Cesario, by the roses of the spring …’ today could be read as: funny; not accepting that ‘no’ means ‘no’; genuinely desiring Cesario for their androgyny.

Michael Dobson discusses disguise and the Festival of Twelfth Night at https://www.bl.uk/shakespeare/articles/festivity-dressing-up-and-misrule-in-twelfth-night
Tamsin Greig discusses playing Malvolia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fmZ6jHqqI
Donald Sinden discusses playing ‘Malvolio in Twelfth Night’ in Players of Shakespeare 1, ed. Philip Brockbank, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, reprinted 1989.
Zoe Wanamaker discusses playing ‘Viola in Twelfth Night’ in Players of Shakespeare 2: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by players with the Royal Shakespeare Company ed. Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1988.