Twelfth Night Critics + Productions

Stephen Beresford 2004 Albery production

modern day India to include their caste system, as well as tense relationships between masters and servants

Judi Dench in 1969 was “attractively ambiguous”

Keir Elam

“the only constant feature of love is its instability”

L.G.. Salingar

“men love women precisely as representations”

Greenblatt

Malvolio is “in the prison of his own ego”

A.S. Leggatt

Malvolio’s “fatal narcissism”

Keir Elam

Antony Sher in 1987 RSC prod became genuinely mad when playing Malvolio, such as at the end when he was “still essaying cross gartered high kicks as if his wits have finally turned”

Michael Billington

“the joke has been taken too far and we know it”

Ralph Berry

Orsino is a “narcissistic fool”

Herschel Baker

Orsino is “a lonely dreamer with an idealistic cast of mind”

Schalkwyk

In Peter Gill’s 1974 RSC prod Orsino was “hugging Cesario to his breast with rapturous abandon”

Michael Billington

Adrian Noble’s 1997 RSC prod

Orsino surrounded by his servants in crushed velvet suits → effeminate

Orsino is a Petrarchan lover

Mark Strong in 2002

Antonio and Sebastian share a romantic relationship

Emma Smith

Antonio and Sebastian get up out of an unmade bed together in II.i

Lindsay Posner 2001 RSC

“both women end up as subject to male dominance in the hierarchy of marriage”

Jean Howard

“for women in this play are notably at the mercy of men’s designs”

Kate Flint

“delicious comedy”

Caroline Spurgeon

“silvery undertones of sadness”

John Middleton Murray

“gender bending is the name of the game”

Lisa Jardine

“Sebastian takes a passive, classically feminine role”

Logan

“fools are the only ones who speak frankly and tell the truth”

Erasmus

“the predominant figure of comedy is the fool”

Andrew Scott

“a tired clown who sports masks because it is the only sanctioned outlet for his insights”

Grief

“he knows the world too well”

Lloyd

"aching sadness at the very heart of his character”

Makenzi Crouch

A blank my lord – perfectly sums up what Viola will be for the rest of the play, “erased, empty, veiled from sight”

Palfrey

Her cross dressing does not act as a form of liberation

Anne Barton

Shakespeare “undermines the nature of true friendship in Twelfth Night”

Raea DiMassino

Sir Andrew is a “likeable lunatic” with a “moonstruck pathos”

W.R. Darlington

James Dodd as Sir A in 1771 Drury Lane prod

slow witted; decked out in the colour that Olivia detests, cowardly yellow

threw up over Olivia in I.v

Barry Stanton in 2001

“every character has their masks”

Joseph Summers

“the play calls into question the key idea of a true identity”

Catherine Belsey

“there is no feast without cruelty”

Nietzsche

“the festive desire to hold back the passing of time … to escape from one’s awareness of time passing”

Kate Flint

Peter Gill’s 1974 RSC

Giant portrait of Narcissus that dominates the set

“TN presents perhaps the most radical vision of the centrality of clothes to the fashioning of a person”

Jones and Stallybrass

Donald Sinden as Malvolio

wears his chain of office over his night shirt

it’s a very self-conscious play - meta theatre

Keir Elam

Neha Dubey as Olivia in a 2004 prod

first appears in solemn black sari, but slowly switches to vibrant saris to display her transformation

modern audiences have more sympathy for Malvolio than Shakespeare intended

Mark Van Doren

His madness is “his illusion of maintaining control over circumstances when in fact he has lost control”

Wilbern

Malvolio is trapped in a dog’s house and Feste feeds him dog food while wearing an eccentric wizard’s beard

Adrian Noble’s 1997 RSC prod

“Orsino is in love with love”

G.G Gervinus

His “first speech has all the languid self indulgence of a man [who lives] in an illusion of love”

Gareth Lloyd Evans

critics try to outdo one another in scorning Orsino

Stephen Booth

“for both Orsino and Olivia self-deception serves as an avoidance of the real world and of real emotions”

David Lewis

the end of the play returns “the unruly women to their rightful places in a patriarchal society”

Alice Aspinall

“the genius of Twelfth Night is Feste”

Bloom

“the cruelest of Shakespeare’s jesters”

White

Feste exists outside of the time boundaries of Illyria

Makenzi Crouch

Feste often switches between accents - which is his real voice?

Mark Hadfield in 2001 RSC prod

James Lailey in BBC Radio 3 prod

cross dressing spins the play into a “crisis of category”

Majorie Garber

the scenes between Viola and Olivia are “among the most intense scenes of Twelfth Night”

Michael Dobson

where could Illyria be?

Albania or Turkey

“the oppositions between outside and inside is significant in Olivia’s exercise of power and desire”

Keir Elam

links to Turkey allude to more relaxed sexual practices of the east in contrast to more English values

Relihan

if this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as improbable fiction… this is an “authenticating device”

Burns