Twelfth Night

By William Shakespeare and Paul Werstine

Named for the twelfth night after Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, Twelfth Night plays with love and power. The Countess Olivia, a woman with her own household, attracts Duke (or Count) Orsino. Two other would-be suitors are her pretentious steward, Malvolio, and Sir Andrew Aguecheek.

Onto this scene arrive the twins Viola and Sebastian; caught in a shipwreck, each thinks the other has drowned. Viola disguises herself as a male page and enters Orsino’s service. Orsino sends her as his envoy to Olivia—only to have Olivia fall in love with the messenger. The play complicates, then wonderfully untangles, these relationships.

The authoritative edition of Twelfth Night from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:

-The exact text of the printed book for easy cross-reference
-Hundreds of hypertext links for instant navigation
-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
-Full explanatory notes conveniently linked to the text of the play
-Scene-by-scene plot summaries
-A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases
-An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language
-An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
-Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books
-An annotated guide to further reading

Essay by Catherine Belsey

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, is home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare’s printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit Folger.edu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Apr 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781476788609

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) is arguably the most famous playwright to ever live. Born in England, he attended grammar school but did not study at a university. In the 1590s, Shakespeare worked as partner and performer at the London-based acting company, the King’s Men. His earliest plays were Henry VI and Richard III, both based on the historical figures. During his career, Shakespeare produced nearly 40 plays that reached multiple countries and cultures. Some of his most notable titles include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Julius Caesar. His acclaimed catalog earned him the title of the world’s greatest dramatist.

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Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, edited by Dr. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine.

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THE NEW FOLGER LIBRARY

SHAKESPEARE

Designed to make Shakespeare’s great plays available to all readers, the New Folger Library edition of Shakespeare’s plays provides accurate texts in modern spelling and punctuation, as well as scene-by-scene action summaries, full explanatory notes, many pictures clarifying Shakespeare’s language, and notes recording all significant departures from the early printed versions. Each play is prefaced by a brief introduction, by a guide to reading Shakespeare’s language, and by accounts of his life and theater. Each play is followed by an annotated list of further readings and by a Modern Perspective written by an expert on that particular play.

Barbara A. Mowat was Director of Research emerita at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Consulting Editor of Shakespeare Quarterly, and author of The Dramaturgy of Shakespeare’s Romances and of essays on Shakespeare’s plays and their editing.

Paul Werstine is Professor of English at the Graduate School and at King’s University College at Western University. He is a general editor of the New Variorum Shakespeare and author of Early Modern Playhouse Manuscripts and the Editing of Shakespeare, as well as many papers and essays on the printing and editing of Shakespeare’s plays.

The Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is a privately funded research library dedicated to Shakespeare and the civilization of early modern Europe. It was founded in 1932 by Henry Clay and Emily Jordan Folger, and incorporated as part of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the nation’s oldest liberal arts colleges, from which Henry Folger had graduated in 1879. In addition to its role as the world’s preeminent Shakespeare collection and its emergence as a leading center for Renaissance studies, the Folger Shakespeare Library offers a wide array of cultural and educational programs and services for the general public.

EDITORS

BARBARA A. MOWAT

Former Director of Academic Programs emerita

Folger Shakespeare Library

PAUL WERSTINE

Professor of English

King’s University College at Western University, Canada

From the Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library

It is hard to imagine a world without Shakespeare. Since their composition more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s plays and poems have traveled the globe, inviting those who see and read his works to make them their own.

Readers of the New Folger Editions are part of this ongoing process of taking up Shakespeare, finding our own thoughts and feelings in language that strikes us as old or unusual and, for that very reason, new. We still struggle to keep up with a writer who could think a mile a minute, whose words paint pictures that shift like clouds. These expertly edited texts are presented as a resource for study, artistic exploration, and enjoyment. As a new generation of readers engages Shakespeare in eBook form, they will encounter the classic texts of the New Folger Editions, with trusted notes and up-to-date critical essays available at their fingertips. Now readers can enjoy expertly edited, modern editions of Shakespeare anywhere they bring their e-reading devices, allowing readers not simply to keep up, but to engage deeply with a writer whose works invite us to think, and think again.

The New Folger Editions of Shakespeare’s plays, which are the basis for the texts realized here in digital form, are special because of their origin. The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is the single greatest documentary source of Shakespeare’s works. An unparalleled collection of early modern books, manuscripts, and artwork connected to Shakespeare, the Folger’s holdings have been consulted extensively in the preparation of these texts. The Editions also reflect the expertise gained through the regular performance of Shakespeare’s works in the Folger’s Elizabethan Theater.

I want to express my deep thanks to editors Barbara Mowat and Paul Werstine for creating these indispensable editions of Shakespeare’s works, which incorporate the best of textual scholarship with a richness of commentary that is both inspired and engaging. Readers who want to know more about Shakespeare and his plays can follow the paths these distinguished scholars have tread by visiting the Folger either in person or online, where a range of physical and digital resources exist to supplement the material in these texts. I commend to you these words, and hope that they inspire.

Michael Witmore

Director, Folger Shakespeare Library

Contents

Editors’ Preface

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

Shakespeare’s Life

Shakespeare’s Theater

The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays

An Introduction to This Text

Characters in the Play

Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

Text of the Play with Commentary

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 5

Scene 1

Textual Notes

Twelfth Night: A Modern Perspective

by Catherine Belsey

Further Reading

Key to Famous Lines and Phrases

Commentary

Act 1

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 2

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Scene 5

Act 3

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

Act 4

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Act 5

Scene 1

Editors’ Preface

In recent years, ways of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts and with the interpretation of his plays have been undergoing significant change. This edition, while retaining many of the features that have always made the Folger Shakespeare so attractive to the general reader, at the same time reflects these current ways of thinking about Shakespeare. For example, modern readers, actors, and teachers have become interested in the differences between, on the one hand, the early forms in which Shakespeare’s plays were first published and, on the other hand, the forms in which editors through the centuries have presented them. In response to this interest, we have based our edition on what we consider the best early printed version of a particular play (explaining our rationale in a section called An Introduction to This Text) and have marked our changes in the text—unobtrusively, we hope, but in such a way that the curious reader can be aware that a change has been made and can consult the Textual Notes to discover what appeared in the early printed version.

Current ways of looking at the plays are reflected in our brief introductions, in many of the commentary notes, in the annotated lists of Further Reading, and especially in each play’s Modern Perspective, an essay written by an outstanding scholar who brings to the reader his or her fresh assessment of the play in the light of today’s interests and concerns.

As in the Folger Library General Reader’s Shakespeare, which this edition replaces, we include explanatory notes designed to help make Shakespeare’s language clearer to a modern reader, and we hyperlink notes to the lines that they explain. We also follow the earlier edition in including illustrations—of objects, of clothing, of mythological figures—from books and manuscripts in the Folger Library collection. We provide fresh accounts of the life of Shakespeare, of the publishing of his plays, and of the theaters in which his plays were performed, as well as an introduction to the text itself. We also include a section called Reading Shakespeare’s Language, in which we try to help readers learn to break the code of Elizabethan poetic language.

For each section of each volume, we are indebted to a host of generous experts and fellow scholars. The Reading Shakespeare’s Language sections, for example, could not have been written had not Arthur King, of Brigham Young University, and Randal Robinson, author of Unlocking Shakespeare’s Language, led the way in untangling Shakespearean language puzzles and shared their insights and methodologies generously with us. Shakespeare’s Life profited by the careful reading given it by S. Schoenbaum, Shakespeare’s Theater was read and strengthened by Andrew Gurr and John Astington, and The Publication of Shakespeare’s Plays is indebted to the comments of Peter W. M. Blayney. We, as editors, take sole responsibility for any errors in our editions.

We are grateful to the authors of the Modern Perspectives, to Leeds Barroll and David Bevington for their generous encouragement, to the Huntington and Newberry Libraries for fellowship support, to King’s College for the grants it has provided to Paul Werstine, to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which provided him with a Research Time Stipend for 1990–91, and to the Folger Institute’s Center for Shakespeare Studies for its fortuitous sponsorship of a workshop on Shakespeare’s Texts for Students and Teachers (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and led by Richard Knowles of the University of Wisconsin), a workshop from which we learned an enormous amount about what is wanted by college and high-school teachers of Shakespeare today.

In preparing this preface for the publication of Twelfth Night in 1993, we wrote, Our biggest debt is to the Folger Shakespeare Library—to Werner Gundersheimer, Director of the Library, who made possible our edition; to Jean Miller, the Library’s Art Curator, who combed the Library holdings for illustrations, and to Julie Ainsworth, Head of the Photography Department, who carefully photographed them; to Georgianna Ziegler, Reference Librarian, whose research skills have been invaluable; to Peggy O’Brien, Director of Education, who gave us expert advice about the needs being expressed by Shakespeare teachers and students (and to Martha Christian and other ‘master teachers’ who used our texts in manuscript in their classrooms); to the staff of the Academic Programs Division, especially Paul Menzer (who drafted ‘Further Reading’ material), Mary Tonkinson, Lena Cowen Orlin, Molly Haws, Amy Adler, and Jessica Hymowitz; to Rachel Duchak, who helped us find the ‘new map’; and, finally, to the staff of the Library Reading Room, whose patience and support have been invaluable.

As we revise the play for publication in 2019, we add to the above our gratitude to Michael Witmore, Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, who brings to our work a gratifying enthusiasm and vision; to Eric Johnson, the Folger’s Director of Digital Access, who expertly manages our editions in both their paper and their many electronic forms; to Gail Kern Paster, Director of the Library from 2002 until July 2011, whose interest and support have been unfailing and whose scholarly expertise continues to be an invaluable resource; to Jonathan Evans and Alysha Bullock, our production editors at Simon & Schuster, whose expertise, attention to detail, and wisdom are essential to this project; to the Folger’s Photography Department; to Deborah Curren-Aquino for continuing superb editorial assistance and for her exceptionally fine Further Reading annotations; to Alice Falk for her expert copyediting; to Michael Poston for unfailing computer support; to Jessica Roberts Frazier, Sophie Byvik, Gabrielle Linnell, and Stacey Redick; and to Rebecca Niles (whose help is crucial). Among the editions we consulted, we found Keir Elam’s 2008 Arden edition especially useful. Finally, we once again express our thanks to Stephen Llano for twenty-five years of support as our invaluable production editor, to the late Jean Miller for the wonderful images she unearthed, and to the ever-supportive staff of the Library Reading Room.

Barbara A. Mowat died on Thanksgiving Day 2017. Her knowledge, wisdom, and great care of Shakespeare’s texts will be sorely missed.

Paul Werstine

2019

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare plays with the intersections of love and power. The Countess Olivia is presented to us at the play’s beginning as an independent and powerful woman. The sudden deaths of her father and her brother have left her in charge of her own household and have thereby given her power over such male relatives as Sir Toby Belch. Her status as a wealthy, aristocratic single woman makes her the focus of male attention, and she is especially attractive to Duke (or Count) Orsino, who, as the play begins, is already pursuing her. There also circle about her two other would-be suitors: the pretentious and socially ambitious steward, Malvolio, a man whose ambitions make him vulnerable to manipulation by members of Olivia’s household; and the weak and foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek, who is altogether ignored by Olivia but whose delusions of possible marriage to her make him an easy victim of the flattering and swindling Sir Toby.

Onto this scene arrive the well-born twins Viola and Sebastian, and the love of power gives way to the power of love. The twins have been shipwrecked; each thinks the other is drowned; both are destitute. Without protection, Viola chooses to disguise herself as a page, call herself Cesario, and enter into the service of Orsino. In her role as the young Cesario, such is her beauty and her command of language that she immediately wins Orsino’s complete trust; he enlists her as his envoy to his beloved Olivia—only to have Olivia fall desperately in love with the beautiful young messenger. Sebastian, too, although without either power or wealth, is similarly irresistible. Antonio, for example, not only saves him from death in the sea but also risks his own life to remain in Sebastian’s company.

As is usual in comedy, the play complicates these tangled relationships before it finally and wonderfully untangles them. The title of the play suggests that there is a certain urgency to the need for this disentangling. Twelfth Night is the twelfth night after Christmas, the last night of what used to be the extended period of celebration of the Christmas season. Thus it marks the boundary between the time for games and disguisings and the business of the workaday world. The second part of the title, What You Will, suggests that this play gives us a world that we would all choose (or will) to enjoy, if we but could.

After you have read the play, we invite you to read A Modern Perspective on Twelfth Night written by Professor Catherine Belsey of Cardiff University, contained in this eBook.

Reading Shakespeare’s Language: Twelfth Night, or, What You Will

For many people today, reading Shakespeare’s language can be a problem—but it is a problem that can be solved. Those who have studied Latin (or even French or German or Spanish) and those who are used to reading poetry will have little difficulty understanding the language of poetic drama. Others, however, need to develop the skills of untangling unusual sentence structures and of recognizing and understanding poetic compressions, omissions, and wordplay. And even those skilled in reading unusual sentence structures may have occasional trouble with Shakespeare’s words. More than four hundred years of static—caused by changes in language and in life—intervene between his speaking and our hearing. Most of his vocabulary is still in use, but a few of his words are no longer used, and many of his words now have meanings quite different from those they had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In the theater, most of these difficulties are solved for us by actors who study the language and articulate it for us so that the essential meaning is heard—or, when combined with stage action, is at least felt. When we are reading on our own, we must do what each actor does: go over the lines (often with a dictionary close at hand) until the puzzles are solved and the lines yield up their poetry and the characters speak in words and phrases that are, suddenly, rewarding and wonderfully memorable.

Shakespeare’s Words

As you begin to read the opening scenes of a play by Shakespeare, you may notice occasional unfamiliar words. Some are unfamiliar simply because we no longer use them. In the

Reviews for Twelfth Night

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have read this play after seeing it performed at The Globe on Friday. It's funny and relies on comic tropes such as characters dressing up as the opposite sex, dressing in comedic yellow cross-gartered stockings for effect, and formation of love triangles. The Clown role is probably my favourite character. It's light and insubstantial and often doesn't make a whole lot of sense (e.g. the whole Malvolio sub-plot); indeed at one point Fabian says with ironic self-reference "If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction".

[kchung_kaching · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Easily my favorite Shakespeare play.

[birdie.newborn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A rightfully popular Shakespeare play, this one has resourcefulness, the audience is in on the fun, yet it works well.

[julesjones_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

BBC Radio 3 full cast production, first broadcast in 1998, and presented on 2 CDs. I bought this one because of the Blake's 7 interest, as Josette Simon plays Olivia. While it's an enjoyable performance, I would have been hard put to it to follow what was going on without previous knowledge of the plot from seeing the play on stage. Fortunately there's a good synopsis booklet included in the box.

[trilliams · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

So there's this girl that's a guy that works for a guy that she loves as a girl but has to send his love to a girl as a guy and that girl loves the girl as a guy but really she's a girl that looks like a guy and this is why Shakespeare's comedies are just weird.

[kant1066 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this in preparation for going to see an upcoming production of this play put on by "Shakespeare in the Park" that's going to be playing June 1st through the 4th of this year in the Botanical Gardens. Considering the myriad summaries and expositions of this play, I won't recapitulate those here. What I will do, both for my personal use and for the remote possibility that someone else might find some use in them, is post my own thoughts and notes I took as I read it. Hopefully they'll serve as an aide memoire if I ever need one.ACT I: Overall themes: identity (masque?), rejection, and desire. It asks whether or not love is something real, or just another human artifice, much like the music that Count Orsino "feeds" on. Orsino's switch of affection from Olivia to Viola is a hint that he loves the idea of love more than one of the women themselves. He's a parody of the hopeless romantic. Viola's wish to be transformed into a eunuch is indicative of gender liminality - or at least this seems to be a common argument, even though it's readily known that men played all roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean theater (so I'm a little confused by the single-minded focus that much modern scholarship has put on gender in this play). Perhaps this gender ambiguity is a sort of defense mechanism to deal with the uncertainty inherent with being tossed on an unknown island. There has also been some focus on Orsino's shift of affection toward Viola (Cesario) from a platonic friendship to a more romantic one. (Could our more modern emotional coldness associated with masculinity be coloring this reading, too?) Feste is obviously one of the cleverest people in the play. "Cucullus non facit monachum" indeed! As a critique of courtly love, this act accomplishes a lot, and Feste comes out being one of the least foolish people on the stage.ACT II: Malvolio (literally, from the Latin, "ill will"), the only character who takes himself much too seriously, is tricked into the tomfoolery that he himself so deplores, ultimately proving Feste right: it's not just the role of the fool to entertain folly.ACT III: Even though, considering Malvolio's transformation from joy-hating blowhard into romantic lover is a drastic one, that Olivia thinks him mad might be telling. Is there any room here for a sort of Foucauldian discussion of what constitutes "madness and civilization" in Elizabethan England? From the little that I've seen of the scholarly literature, I haven't yet seen any discussions that run along these lines.

[vgnunez_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this play in high school. I immediately connected with Viola who hid her true identity (and her emotions) from society. Though modern critics look at (and/or analyze) the story's use of homosexuality and gender/sexual politics, I can't break from my initial path of loving the story for Viola's strength in hiding her identity and love.

[jhudsui_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In the words of deuce: "gay, working on gayer". Kind of a shame it never made it to gayer because Viola and the Countess are the most well developed pairing in the play. Also while the Duke's bits where he acts like a self-important tool are funny, they undermine the "happy ending" of Viola marrying him. This could have been fixed by giving him some bits where he displayed more redeeming characteristics, because (unlike the rapist guy in Two Gentleman) nothing he does is unforgivable... it's just that, all we do see of his personality is that he's kind of a douche. The production of it I saw was consistently funny in every scene and I had a great time watching it performed.

[emcarso1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What can one really say negative about Shakespeare? Any of his writings are simply a classic. However, this would not be my favourite of his works, it's simply a bit too ridiculous for my personal taste - I know Shakespeare's audience would have loved it. Boy loves Girl, another Girl (2) is stranded and decides to cross-dress to be near Boy, Boy sends Girl 2 to persuade Girl 1 of his love who in turn falls in love with cross-dressing Girl 2. Then Girl 2's twin brother shows up and causes chaos and in the end Boy 2 ends up with Girl 1 and Boy 1 with cross-dressing Girl 2, not questioning her cross-dressing for a second

[clarisao-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I´ve re-read it countless times..My favourite from Shakespeare.

[alanwpowers · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Here Shakespeare borrows as so often in his comedies, from Plautus for the overarching plot--the separated siblings, the twinning (recall his Errors, and the Menaechmi), the arrival from sea. But he adds so much as to make it unrecognizable as a Roman comedy. He adds an attractive drunk, Sir Toby, who fleeces a silly aristocrat who--perhaps alone in literature-- knows himself to be silly. He adds, for instance, a parody of Renaissance psychiatry (well, more theology, but since "psyche" in Greek is both "soul" and "mind," that's fair) practiced on Shakespeare's only American. Instead of the common psyche ward question, "What does 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' mean to you?" Feste as Reverend Psychiatrist asks, "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning the soul?" Remember, you can't get out of the psyche ward unless you answer right. Well, Malvolio DOES get it right, he hits it out of the park, but Feste keeps him in lockdown anyway. Why?Herein lies a tale. Malvolio is portrayed as stark raving mad simply because he wants to marry the boss's daughter--or really, the boss herself. A crazy idea. An American idea, one that would take a couple centuries and a Revolution to be accepted by anybody at all. Those rejects on the other side of the Atlantic.Yes, Malvolio is Shakespeare's only American (except possibly Othello?). And he is indeed, as he himself pleads at plays end, notoriously abused. He vows revenge on the whole pack--which we, as delighted playgoers, cannot support, though justice, and America, are on his side.

[bryndahlquis · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This has always been one of my favorite Shakespeare plays, and it probably always will be. It's just as fun to read the second time, with plenty of humor and lovely lines. Feste, of course, is my favorite.I feel like I could go into a long analysis of it, but... I read it for my English class, and no doubt we're going to dissect it and talk about all the underlying themes. Personally, I say you should just read it and enjoy it and then go see it performed.

[othemts · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

My favorite Shakespearean comedy (partially because I portrayed Sir Toby in a high school production) with the perfect mix of witty dialogue, physical humor and characterization.

[amerynth · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The introduction says Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" is one of his most performed plays, which is funny since I've never heard of it being performed locally (and have seen many others.)It wouldn't surprise me though, as the play is pretty entertaining and uses the often-employed Shakespearean disguise fairly well. The story follows Viola and Sebastian, siblings who are in a shipwreck and each believes the other has died. Meanwhile, the beautiful Olivia is fending off a crew of courting men and antics ensue.Overall, the story is fairly amusing and moves along at a nice pace.

[bookconcierge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Audio performed by Stella Gonet, Gerard Murphy and a full cast

Viola and her twin brother, Sebastian, are separated during a shipwreck. When she arrives on the shores of Illyria, she presumes Sebastian is dead. The ship’s captain helps her disguise herself as a man, and she enters the service of Duke Orsino, with whom she falls in love. Orsino, however, loves the Countess Olivia, who has foresworn any suitors while she mourns the death of her father and brother. Orsino begs Cesario (Viola in disguise) to plead his case with Olivia, but Olivia instead falls in love with Cesario. And so the fun begins.

I love Shakespeare, and I confess to liking his comedies more than the tragedies or historical dramas. I find it particularly delightful to watch the various mistaken identities, convoluted twists and turns in plot, purposeful obfuscations or pranks, and dawning realizations unfold before my eyes. The scenarios are outlandish and ridiculous to a modern audience, but are still fun and delightful in their execution.

BUT … I dislike reading plays. I much prefer to see them performed. When I’m reading – especially Shakespeare – I find that I lose the sense of action and can more easily get bogged down in unfamiliar terms or phrases. Listening to this audio performance was a happy compromise. I’ve seen this play on stage and could easily picture the scenarios and shenanigans while listening to this very talented cast audio performance.

I did also have a text version to supplement the audio experience, and the particular edition I had (Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-953609-2) includes a long introduction outlining the history of this work, copious footnotes in the play defining terms, an appendix with the music, and an extensive index. It is an edition I would definitely recommend to someone who is studying this play.

[girl_detective · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The text of the play is mostly a delight, though there are a few toothsome things to mull over after the play is done. Its end of multiple marriages is seemingly tidy, but a few characters are left out in the cold, including Antonio, whose love for Sebastian may be the truest and most steadfast love in the play.

[martinbodek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Madcap was 't adventure
And pleasure finest to read.
Whilst mirthy with the wordplay.
Brought forth as Feste's mead.
Three's Company-esque
Was allst confusion.
Which what happened
By staged amusion.
Verily, I enjoyed it, by and by.
What readeth me next, wondereth I?

[aliceanna-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Though my text stated that that was his comic masterpiece, I liked As You Like It much better. The only saving grace, for me, was the clown. He saved the best lines of wit and wisdom for that character. I suppose by this point, I am getting a bit put off by all the mistaken identity stuff. Perhaps the Bard was growing weary of the device as well.

[clif_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I listened to this play a year ago and forgot to add to my Library Thing list. So the plot isn't fresh in my mind. I do remember that the plot is quite complicated with numerous mistaken identities, disguises and switching of roles. The plot is so convoluted that I recommend drafting a chart to keep track of the characters and their multiple identities. There is a mean joke played on a Puritan character in the play which was probably funny to 16th Century theater audiences. However, I fou...more I listened to this play a year ago and forgot to add to my Goodreads list. So the plot isn't fresh in my mind. I do remember that the plot is quite complicated with numerous mistaken identities, disguises and switching of roles. The plot is so convoluted that I recommend drafting a chart to keep track of the characters and their multiple identities. There is a mean joke played on a Puritan character in the play which was probably funny to 16th Century theater audiences. However, I found it to be cruel and not very funny. Read in December, 2007

[tiffanyak_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is definitely a classic Shakespearean comedy, complete with disguises, intrigue, love, humor, and a lot of fun. In all honesty, I am not generally a big fan of comedies, but this is definitely an example of an exception. As to the edition itself, I found it to be greatly helpful in understanding the action in the play. It has a layout which places each page of the play opposite a page of notes, definitions, explanations, and other things needed to understand that page more thoroughly. While I didn't always need it, I was certainly glad to have it whenever I ran into a turn of language that was unfamiliar, and I definitely appreciated the scene-by-scene summaries. Really, if you want to or need to read Shakespeare, an edition such as this is really the way to go, especially until you get more accustomed to it.

[redg18_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Honestly, I am not all that into reading plays. However, I am so into gender-bender that I had to read 12th night. The whole idea of a girl dressing up as a boy and fooling everyone is so interesting to me. The thing that put me off from this book was the fact that the emotions that the characters were feeling were not as evident just from reading this play. I mean, it was like saying "I feel that I love you". It is not as moving as if the author had described what the feeling is. For some reason, I loved Julius Cesar, Othello, and sort of liked "As you like it". So maybe I am just not into this story that much.

[kathyschenck · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous! Even an eighth grader can read (with a little guidance) and enjoy!

[fufuakaspeechless_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this play. Shakespeare's comedies are very enjoyable.

[jmcgarry2011 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought this was a great edition. They have the text on the right side, and the explanation of obscure terms on the left side. I just saw this play done at the Great River Shakespeare Festival in Winona, MN. It's amazing how closely they followed the text. I didn't need to read it to understand everything, but reading did help explain some things.

[erickibler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I reread the play as I'll be appearing in it this summer as Sir Toby Belch. Ah, what fun!

Shakespeare fact: most directors these days cut Shakespeare's plays down to a reasonable two hours for performance. That will be the case for the production I'm in. I'll miss the double-talk conversations between Sir Toby and the Clown, and some of the "mistaken identity" humor involving male/female twins Sebastian and Viola. Although I can see why the director removed this stuff. In the former case, the invented references to phony experts like "Qeuebus" (God, would I have loved saying "Qeuebus"!) would have been indistinguishable from other archaic references, thereby causing confusion to the average theater goer. In the latter case, the humorous situations are often repetitive.


Cutting Shakespeare is nothing new. David Garrick, an actor and director who was a friend of Samuel Johnson, used to do it routinely in the 18th century.

[coach_of_alva · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Shakespeare's last great romantic comedy combines the wit of the other great comedies with some rather mean-spirited slapstick more reminiscent of his very first comedies. The first is provided largely by the male-impersonating heroine who finds herself, as an intermediary between lovers, becoming the true object of affection from both lovers. The slapstick is provided by Sir Toby Belch, a small-scale Falstaff, and his idiot friends, who make life miserable for a major domo whose Puritanism does not protect him from vanity and desire. I loved it, despite the bullying.

[ncgraham_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

My relationship with the Bard’s works began when, at the tender age of six, I went to a Shakespeare in the Park performance of Much Ado About Nothing and had the time of my life. Since then, it’s been up and down at times with me and Will, as I’ve been alternately befuddled, entranced, delighted, disturbed, and moved by his handiwork. It was only last year, however, that I really began reading his plays in earnest—up until then, my exposure had been limited solely to films and live performances. I've been taking them slowly, picking up a play as the inclination strikes, and not following any particular order.Despite the fact that it is critically regarded as one of Shakespeare's best and most advanced comedies, I have to say that so far Twelfth Night is my least favorite of the lot. I’m hoping it’s not because it was assigned for a class, when all the others I picked up of my own volition. Either way, I found I couldn’t connect to any of these characters, neither when I read the play nor when I watched the 1996 Trevor Nunn film (and let me tell you, if Helena Bonham Carter can’t make me feel for Olivia, no one can). They made for an interesting group to observe— not the uninvolved, almost scientific word. There is no Puck or Rosalind or Beatrice or Shylock to give this comedy some sort of heart or animating spirit. Viola and Feste come closest, simply because they are vehicles for some of Shakespeare's best poetry and wordplay—but even then, the language is more interesting than its bearers. Indeed, I would say this play is most interesting when looked at mostly for how it uses language and what it has to say about it.The critics are right in commending Twelfth Night for its clever wordplay and complex social vision, but to my mind Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are far more entertaining, and The Merchant of Venice deeper.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Shipwrecked siblings, love-struck Dukes and Duchesses, silly servants and misplaced affections. I enjoyed this very much. No one does confusion of identity as well as Shakespeare, and when it's one of his comedies, there is always a happy ending.

[anduril85 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this book with my girlfriend and it was ok but not one of my most liked books ever. At times it's a little hard to understand if you don't have the spark notes or some other translation like it, but if you like plays and have never read it I recommend it to you, for everyone else you.

[hippielunatic · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

There is brilliance in this play, as there is in all of Shakespeare's work... but...Well, this one doesn't live up to the others, at least not in the reading of the script. I could not attach myself to any of the characters, and while I often have to reread the words and the footnotes to gain any understanding of the plot, this one felt hollow to me, even after I could grasp what was going on.The brilliance comes in much of the twisting of words and understandings of phrases. Shakespeare was a wordsmith, there is no doubt about that.... but most of the time, I feel like he was also incredibly connected to his characters, his audience, his stories. This one felt flimsy to me.