I always feel a twinge of guilt whenever I read these “Elizabethan English alongside modern English” copies of Shakespeare’s plays. But as good as it is to appreciate some of the beautiful language of the time, it’s still gosh darn nice to actually understand what is happening.

This play seems to have always been on the outskirts of his repertoire, in my mind. Not as much as The Merchant of Venice or some of the boring histories, but I never thought this one to be on same level of notoriety as Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet. It certainly doesn’t seem to be performed as much.

But turns out, it’s fun! The cross-dressing, general love-triangles (squares?), unrequited love, insta-love, and rom-com-level misunderstandings make this a wacky ride. You have to give into the suspension of disbelief. Then you can appreciate the layers of subtle commentary. Look twice, or you'll miss it.

Of course, the sub-plot is boring as all get-out (as it usually is in his plays). All the sidekick boys were annoying as heck and I could never keep them straight. Malvolio, Belch, Aguecheek, Feste -- You could drop all the scenes with them and never lose a thing (same for other comedic relief in his plays -- Rosencranz and Guildenstern, anyone?). The girl characters are where it’s at. Viola, Olivia, Maria -- Fascinating things going on in their brains, and they don’t put up with anyone’s tom-foolery.

The only reason this gets four and not five stars is that we're rating on the scale of Shakespeare to Shakespeare, and I think that there is some awkwardness in this one in terms of the conclusion; where everyone goes and how they get to it. There are also some very thin plot devices that annoy me.

However, that being said, I love this play. I played Mariah in it in high school, and it was one of the most fun things I've been in. It can be played for laughs, or for the dark side. The movie version I own goes for the dark depression, the one I was in was slapstick comedy, mostly. I prefer a mix of the two. I like it when it's slapstick, and then you strike a completely discordant note with the Fool or Malvolio, for instance. It can be quite striking in that regard, I think.

One of my favorites of the comedies!

A play that can really come alive when staged, as opposed to read. As with many of Shakespeare's comedies, there's lots of frivolity and crazy fun, undergirded with some darker themes.

راستش این جا دیگه واقعا گیج شدم‌ امتیازی که میدم بر چه اساسی باشه!!!که هم حس خودم رو نشون بدم و هم اثر ادبی رو از لحاظ جایگاه در ادبیات....
خلاصه من همون مزه ای که به خودم داد رو لحاظ کردم و دو ستاره دادم .
هیچ دوستش نداشتم ولی دیگه دلم نیومد شکسپیر هم بی ستاره بمونه.خلاصه که خیلی جدی نگیرید شاید بی سوادی منم بوده.
شاید هم ترجمه ی خوبی رو انتخاب نکردم.
نوع ادبیاتش حتی در فارسی هم سخت بود و با اینکه گفته شده زبان طنزی داره من خیلی خیلی کم‌این برداشت رو داشتم موقع خوندن شاید فقط چند جای کوچیک.

Twelfth Night is a frenetic comedy of tomfoolery and excess. Everything is purposefully ridiculous—a satire of previously written farces, reveling in itself. While in As You Like It Shakespeare gives us, for once, a genuinely convincing picture of love, in Twelfth Night he is back to his old sardonic ways. Shakespeare was perhaps as cynical as Proust or Freud on the subject of love, since he seems to savor its arbitrariness. Olivia falls in love with Viola on false pretences, and then easily transfers her feelings to the (strangely willing) Sebastian. Duke Orsino, on the other hand, after pledging his undying love for Olivia, instantly falls in love with Viola once he finds out that she is a woman and not a boy. And this is not to mention that, as so often with Shakespeare, we end with a supremely strange match: the witty and lively Viola with the melodramatic and melancholic Duke Orsino. It would be depressing were it not so funny.

Shakespeare crosses the line from comedy to sadism in the subplot of Malvolio. While at first the unctuous prig’s comeuppance is wholly satisfying, his imprisonment and mockery cannot help but spark outrage from the audience—especially considering that his torturers are drunkards and fools, not half as compelling as Malvolio (insufferable as he is). On the other hand, Shakespeare gave us a perfect picture of wisdom in Feste, the fool, who brings a warmth and sanity to every scene he takes part in. Though neither Viola nor Malvolio nor Feste can compare as characters with the likes of Rosalind, the complete cast abounds in lively contrast. And then there is the abundance of memorable lines, scattered with Shakespearean generosity. In sum, then, I think that this is easily among the stronger of Shakespeare’s comedies.

For a long time I preferred Shakespeare's tragedies to his comedies, and to an extent I still do; but I have found a new appreciation of his comedies, particularly in Twelfth Night. Economical yet unforced, hilarious yet humane, confined yet infinite, clever yet accessible: such is Twelfth Night or What You Will. The play follows the shipwrecked twins, Viola (disguised as the boy Cesario) and Sebastian, in Illyria, where the hilarity of mistaken identity and unwanted love and unrequited love are all turned up on the head and brought to a comedic reveal and reversal. Viola loves Orsino loves Olivia loves Viola, then marries Sebastian, mistaking him for Viola, upsetting Orsino, offending Antonio, etc. The tangled web of comedy in the final two acts is masterfully done, and the sideplot trick on the proud Malvolio is a misjustice sweetly served.

What strikes me in Shakespeare is the commonalities among his plays, even down to the very tautology: "I am what I am," which I suspect is uttered in some permutation in all, or nearly all, his plays, which drives at the truth of identity and what it means to be "what you are." I was particularly struck by Viola's final assertion in this comedic exchange:

OLIVIA
Stay:
I prithee, tell me what thou thinkest of me.
VIOLA
That you do think you are not what you are.
OLIVIA
If I think so, I think the same of you.
VIOLA
Then think you right: I am not what I am.

"I am not what I am" - the very line which is the key to the character of Iago in Othello quoted verbatim for the ends of comedy. In saying the same line, Iago means that he is a trickster, that he deceives and betrays those who hold stock in his outward appearance of honesty. When Viola exclaims the same words, she means that she is literally not as she appears, that her outward appearance of a boy is but a disguise.

Can anyone truly say "I am what I am," or conversely claim the opposite, without some irony or self-awareness that reverses the very claim? I am what I am, only insofar as I am aware of it myself, and only to myself can I be thus. To an acquaintance, I may be something utterly unfamiliar to my own perceptions of myself, which is shaped by his/her desires of me, expectations and prejudices of me, etc. So am I entirely what I am, or what I am not? The question of identity, what it means to be your true Self, is a common thread which traces its spool to the pre-Shakespearean dawn, and up through the consciousness of our own modern times. It is a question ever unresolved. And it can lead to both tragic, malicious ends, or result in comedic bemusement. Unlike in the literal masquerade of false identity in Much Ado About Nothing, the masks of Twelfth Night are true faces, disguised, but essentially true. In loving Viola and professing her love to her, Olivia reveals her masculinity and boldness, and also her Narcissism for liking what is literally closer to her self than any man. Though the play ends in a double marriage, and a conjoiner of Orsino and Olivia by the mutual relation of their spouses, one can't help but wonder of the happiness of Olivia with Sebastian, a man who she scarcely knows. Does she only love him for his appearance, which he shares with his sister's disguise? Or is there something more at the heart of it. While Viola truly loves Orsino as he is, even in his love for someone else, Olivia's love for Sebastian is never proven, only transferred. Despite the high comedy of the play, and the interplay of identities, doubles and disguises, there is a subtle question of the nature of the play which follows the play, the unwritten play, wherein the full effects of mistaken identity may play out to tragic or yet comedic ends.

**********

Additional thoughts on Twelfth Night:

If Denmark is a prison, Illyria is a madhouse. The distinct flavor of pure comedy is a direct result of the the zaniness of all characters, save the fool! Shakespeare's "most perfect comedy" achieves such a status though Shakespeare's parodies on his own devices: turning upside-down his own ploy of mistaken identity and criss-crossed loves explored in previous romantic comedies and taking them to hilarious extremes. Illyria is a dukedom haunted by strange phantoms, men and women of such peculiar extremes as to parody themselves.

Take the Duke, Orsino, who despite his surety of his infinite love for Olivia, seems more in love with himself, or rather in love with being in love. How quickly he can transfer his love for Olivia to Viola, as if it were a matter of rearranging the letters in her name. Olivia too is an oddity. Originally racked with grief, swearing off men completely, she is apparently fallen in love at first sight with the first boy she meets, and her boldness which may surpass some of Shakespeare's bolder heroines, though her bold pursuits are in favor of so ridiculous a prize.

But the oddest man, or rather perhaps the least odd (besides the fool, which remains the only sure-headed man of the chaos of Illyria), is Malvolio, who feels very much at odds with his surroundings and would likely be much happier in almost any other play. In the pace of the play, we find Malvolio a fun butt to the deft prankster Maria, but at second glance, his fate is undeserved and almost cruel. Like Orsino, he is a parody unto himself, but he has an almost infinite creative imagination of himself: "Count Malvolio!" Surely his pride and egoism boarder on solipsism, but he remains one of Twelfth Night's great tragicomedic masterpieces. He at once deserves out pity and our jibes, though he is a man "greater sinn'd against than sinning" - to quote Lear's self styled betrayal by fate. He is an involuntary fool, gulled into a role which he holds beneath his station even as steward, and is locked in the dark cellar as his punishment, a fitting end for a man locked otherwise in the blinding brightness of his own imagination.

"Stary człowiek i morze", gdyby kręcił go Michael Bay
Minus wybuchy.

➳ 4 ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

my favorite shakespeare play so far. so much fun and it was hilarious!

i had the best time and I love all the adaptations of this like all shook up etc. i loved the romance and also feste is just

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. The twins Viola and Sebastian are shipwrecked and separated, each believing the other dead. As one might expect with a Shakespearean comedy that features twins, there are mistaken identities and messy romantic tangles. Everything is made all the more complicated by Viola’s decision, for reasons sort of explained in the play, to pose as a man.

I had some mixed feelings about this one. There was humor, and there were parts that made me laugh. There was another subplot that was supposed to be funny I guess, but I thought it crossed too far over the line into cruelty. Also, the romances were a bit difficult to buy into. I’ll go into more detail on those comments in the spoiler tags near the end. More so than with any of the other Shakespeare plays I’ve read in the past few years, I had trouble sympathizing with, or even understanding in some cases, the motivations of the characters.

Seeing a visual adaptation of Shakespeare’s plays is often helpful, because the actors can portray emotion that isn’t always as clear in a play script, and the way they choose to play the scenes can add depth and clarity. I therefore watched one of the movies, the one from 1996, immediately after I finished reading it. That really helped, I think. I still had problems with some aspects of the story, but the actors helped me buy into both the humor and the emotion of it much more. It also helped make some of the romances slightly more believable, although one of them remained ridiculous in my eyes. I usually get attached to the versions of characters formed in my head when I read something, which is one reason I prefer to read something before watching it so that I don’t rob myself of the chance to form my own mental versions of the characters which I often feel are superior. This was a rare case where I think I liked almost every character in the movie better than the versions I’d had in my head from reading the play. I particularly liked the Fool, although he wasn’t remotely like what I had pictured when reading.

The rest of my comments must be confined to spoiler tags:
I really had a lot of trouble with that whole business with Malvolio. At first it was a little funny, but his tormenters took it way too far and I became quite bothered by it. Although I thought Malvolio could have stood to be taken down a peg or two, I didn’t at all think his behavior justified the way he was treated. I was very much bothered by it during my initial reading, but the movie made it even worse by portraying more clearly how he was treated. I did like that the movie made it more clear that the characters felt some actual regret in the end, but that didn’t make it any less disturbing.

The parts that particularly made me laugh were the mistaken identity bits when Viola was mistaken for Sebastian and vice versa. I found the end a bit ridiculous though, particularly when I was just reading it. I could see why Olivia might have become attracted to Viola in her guise as Cesario based on their conversations, but they only met a few times and their conversations were brief. The fact that they barely know each other is made pretty obvious when she mistakes Sebastian for Viola. It made no sense to me that the two of them jumped into marriage so quickly, especially when Sebastian had never laid eyes on her before. I mean at some point, if the girl who wants you to marry her seems to think she’s known you for a while, wouldn’t you ask, “Hey, are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”

Then Olivia finds out that the guy she married wasn’t the person she fell in love with, but it’s ok because she fell in love with somebody who looked like "him" so that must mean they were destined for each other. Meanwhile, Orsino has been pining over Olivia all this time, but when he learns she’s gotten married and oh by the way his servant is actually a girl, well, no problem. Now that there’s another girl available, he’ll just marry her instead! The movie made the Orsino/Viola relationship far more believable by showing their friendship develop, plus a lot of romantic tension on Viola’s part and a hint of confused romantic tension on Orsino’s part. The Sebastian/Olivia relationship didn’t work for me in either format.

I also thought the motivation for Viola dressing like a man and serving Duke Orsino was very, very thin. The movie helped with that a little, but only a little.

I’m rating this at 2.5 stars based on my limited enjoyment reading the play, but I’m rounding up to 3 on Goodreads because the movie helped me appreciate it more.

A few years ago I read a review of some film that had come out and I was sure I would never see – read the review almost carelessly while flicking through the arts section of the paper on a Saturday morning, no, I must have been clicking over The Age Home Page. The woman who wrote the review commented that whatever the film was had been based on Twelfth Night – which she considered that most ridiculous of Shakespeare’s plays – she really could not see how anyone could be bothered to reproduce this nonsense of Shakespeare’s based on the all too unfunny humour of cross-dressing and confused sexuality. I emailed Fiona the link with some comment to the effect, “Look at what this stupid bitch has written.”

Did I mention that this review was in The Age – that once great newspaper? If anything symbolises the tragic fall that newspaper has suffered…

Anyway, I’ve been trying to remember when I first saw Twelfth Night on telly. My ex-wife and I were away for a dirty weekend and it must have been before I had started university the first time around – the Physics me. I think it was raining outside (we hadn’t gone for the scenery, so the rain was immaterial) and the hotel room had a television. I lay the wrong way on the bed and flicked to channel two and Felicity Kendal appeared, hooded, on a beach – remarkably dry, all things considered – and I instantly feel madly and helplessly in love, first with her but then much more in love with the play.

I love everything about this play. I love all of the obvious things, the boys falling in love with girls who are dressed as boys but are really girls. I love the girls falling in love with ‘youths’ (even before that word became pejorative and male as my daughter, Fiona is now fond of telling me) who are really girls, but end up married to girls who actually aren’t girls, but also not who they think they are but really the girl’s brother… I love the perfectly controlled and perfectly understandable complexity and messiness of it all.

But most I love that it isn’t just a ‘romantic comedy’ – or perhaps I should lay the stress on ‘just’ in that sentence. There are dark themes operating here that are anything but funny. Sir Toby may be Falstaff and may be the life of the party – but he is also a bastard who uses and abuses those around him without mercy or favour. He is a selfish, self-centred prick – pure and simple. And yet we love him and cheer him on and are putty in his hands. He may be the sort of uncle that we all too often are forced to ask – O, how came you so early by this ‘lethargy’? – when we mean – how the hell can you possibly be so pissed this early in the morning? But still, none of us hope Malvolio will find him hiding out of sight when the letter is carefully left to be found – none of us hope Malvolio will not be fooled by the letter.

All the same at the end when Malvolio is released how is it possible to not feel dreadful for him when he says, “Madam, you had done me wrong, notorious wrong.” When we realise that we have spent the play decidedly not standing in his shoes and now Shakespeare is going to make sure we are aware of just what that has meant for this fellow human being. Yes, still not a loveable character – but a fellow human nonetheless.

I took Fiona to see this when she was about 8 – she is now about 18. It was a week night and a school night and we both rushed up to the theatre at the Arts Centre and both sat transfixed. I’m sure both of us must have worried that this play would prove far beyond what she would be able to understand. I had built it up so much that when it started I thought ‘oh god, I’ll ruin Shakespeare for her for life’. But at the end, when the actors had caught sight of her as the youngest in the audience and clearly made a point of catching her eye and were making a fuss of her from the stage and it was also clear she had understood all of the complications that make the last moments of this play so hilariously funny as she was bursting in gales of uncontrollably laughter, I knew that this would be a moment we would both remember and treasure always. Quality time normally comes from quantity time – but sometimes it can be planned.

Years later – I think on my fortieth birthday – we went again to see a production of the play, this time with Fi, her sister, my parents and my intellectually disabled older sister, and again it proved to be a magical night.

That night, as we were coming out at interval, a woman in front of me turned to the young man she had brought with her to see the play and said, “Of course Malvolio is Italian for Bad Will” – I was studying Italian at the time and thought – “Shit, of course it is, why hadn’t I realised that myself?”. Such are the things directly under my nose that I so rarely see. I’ve never been terribly good at the obvious.

And I love the songs – particularly O Mistress Mine (‘Youth’s the stuff will not endure’, and how true that has proven) – and I love the little jokes and Feste, yes, particularly Feste, who I still think has some of the best lines in the play.

And how could anyone not fall in love with someone who says that their preferred method of wooing you would be to,

Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house,
Write loyal canton and contemned love,
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Holla your name to the reverberate hills,
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out ‘Olivia!’ O, you should not rest
Between the elements of the air and earth,
But you should pity me”?

And understatement of the century (17th of course)

Olivia: You might do much

Too bloody right she/he might do much.

Two more things and then I’m done. The one is where the gardener, Fabian to his friends, waits until we are completely taken in and then slaps us awake with, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” Now, what about that? How much balls would that take to write? If you ever needed proof that great writers are totally unconcerned about whether or not they have allowed you to ‘suspended disbelief’ I think you could hardly look further than this. Shakespeare is so certain we are at the edge of our seats he knows he can laugh at us for being so completely sucked in and we will still barely come up for air.

The other thing is this:

Malvolio: By my life, this is my lady’s hand: these be her very c’s, her u’s and her t’s, and thus makes she her great P’s. It is, in contempt of question, her hand.

Sir Andrew: Her c’s, her u’s and her t’s, why that?

For years, like Sir Andrew, I wondered why that as well. One day I even went to the local library and found a reference book that told me that although this was clearly a joke at the time, the mists that separate us from Will mean we will never know.

In a word: Bollocks.

It is hardly remarkable that we find the same things funny now as they did then – and sexual humour is sexual humour and like a well told fart joke will always be funny. There was a film recently called Into The Cut, that also used the word ‘cut’ as slang for female genitalia and pee is still slang for ‘to urinate’ – none of this is obscure at all. Fortunately, I was able to find a second book in the same library that had not been written in the 1950s and was not nearly so prudish or so reticent to explain what ‘a cut’ was. I’m a bit embarrassed I needed it explained, but I cover it well.

When people ask me what is my favourite play by Shakespeare I always hesitate – I mean, how could I possibly say this one when compared to the utter majesty of Lear or Hamlet? I must review Lear one of these days – no play is as likely to bring tears, no play so horrible and distressing or remarkable or devastatingly good. But the truth is that this play simply isn’t the same thing as Lear – it seems strange to give them the same name ‘play’ and really they can’t be compared. I love them both and possibly even equally – but for entirely different reasons. But it is love. Even the thought of this play makes me smile – it is a pure delight and all the confirmation one needs of the genius that is Shakespeare.

I do love this story, and not only because She's The Man ranks as a favorite movie of mine. It is one of the few Shakespeare stories I know by heart without ever intentionally learning (or, apparently, reading it.) But I just really love Viola.
I wish I could love Duke as much.

On the sea of the coast of Illyria, Viola and a ship's Captain are washed ashore after a shipwreck. Viola believes Sebastian, her twin brother, has drowned. She disguises herself as a young man, for safety reasons, and enters the service of the Duke of Orsino. Orsino is in love with the Countess Olivia, who is mourning for her recently deceased father and brother. To honor their memory, she has sworn to reject the company of men for seven years. But, when the disguised Viola delivers a love letter from Orsino, the Countess falls in love with the "young man" and in this way a charming amorous imbroglio begins.

TWELFTH NIGHT includes all the expected ingredients of romance: a shipwreck, disguises and mistaken identities, a young girl in distress, a convoluted plot with a series of interlocking love stories, the gulling of a fool, humor, wit and the final recognition scene. It is a play about people trapped by their illusions, victims of deceit and of their own folly. The characters seem unable to understand their own emotions, and it is important to note that all the characters who are victims of deception learn nothing from the experience. They remain unchanged, self indulgent egotists, who shift their "love" from one object to another with astounding ease.

TWELFTH NIGHT is a gay and lively play which explores the ways in which people tend to deceive themselves and the difficulty of really acknowledging the truth about oneself. We may laugh at the deluded characters of this play, but it is also possible to recognize ourselves in them because deep down we know real self-awareness is not easy to achieve, nor endure.