It has become a truism that Shakespeare’s plays are rich and complex. That is one of the reasons they have remained at the top of the chart for five centuries, not just in their Elizabethan English originals but in other languages and other artistic media such as opera. But that complexity can often seed confusion […]
Once, when I disagreed with the Artistic Director of Curtain Theatre about the meaning of a passage from Twelfth Night, she smiled an enigmatic smile and said “Yes, academics love that passage.” She looked at me with a certain amount of empathy and after a few loaded moments she said, “But I have to make […]
“This fellow is wise enough to play the fool And to do that well craves a kind of wit (3,i,24-5) In one of my favorite scenes in Twelfth Night, Feste, a jester employed by the household of the Countess Olivia and usually referred to as the Fool, returns from an unexplained absence. “Take the […]
“Queer has been defined theoretically as ‘whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant …, as that which is ‘not yet conscious’ …; as the very status of unthinkability’.” Clara Bradbury Rance, Lesbian Cinema After Queer Throry, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2019, p.10 In my post on this website, Master-Mistress: Love, gender […]
The use of pronouns might seem random in Shakespeare’s plays, and it is sometimes, perhaps often, the case that usage depends on the actor or prompt who wrote down or marked the original script. However, it is useful to note that there were subtle class and social distinctions between apparently ordinary or neutral forms of […]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” So begins Twelfth Night…… No? Oh, right you are. Yep, that’s the opening sentence of Pride and Prejudice, written by some woman called Jane a couple of centuries later. Though it might […]
Twelfth Night: It’s the evening before Epiphany, the final day of the Christmas festival that commemorates the time when the three wise men, the Magi, visited Bethlehem to bring gifts to Jesus. It marks the end of a festival, or a carnival, both pagan and christian, in which food and drink, carousing into the night, […]
In the critical literature on Twelfth Night, as far as I can tell from a survey of reading lists and the titles and contents of books and articles, there is very little about the plague. Critics refer of course to Olivia’s comment that falling in love can be as quick as catching the plague; but […]
Editions There are many editions of Twelfth Night and what you choose will depend on the content you want and the format. I tend to work with three editions: firstly, the Arden 3rd Series, which is the most scholarly and provides a comprehensive gloss on words, phrases and editorial choices; secondly, the Arden Performance Edition […]
Meet our dramaturge, Peter Bradbury. Welcome to the Curtain Theatre video blog where we will bring you backstage to meet the production crew, designers and actors to share in some of the fun we are having with “Twelfth Night”. In this video we will introduce you to our dramaturge, Peter Bradbury.