‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.’ And ‘Twelfth Night’ is surely Shakespeare’s greatest rom-com.
In Illyria, disguised Viola becomes a reluctant go-between in the unrequited courtship of disdainful Lady Olivia by Illyria’s Duke, the lovesick Orsino. This gives rise to perhaps the most famous love triangle in English literature: Uptight Olivia falls madly for the impudent ‘Cesario’; who is desperately in love with wistful romantic Orsino; who is besotted with haughty Olivia. The secondary plot concerns the antics of Olivia’s disreputable uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and his band of ne’er-do-well accomplices from Olivia’s peculiar household. These deplorables embark on a spiteful ruse to humiliate Olivia’s insufferably overstuffed steward, Malvolio, but get their comeuppance when drawn into the Viola / Sebastian mix-ups.
Historical Illyria roughly corresponds to present-day Croatia, but this ostensibly foreign setting (as in most of Shakespeare’s comedies), is not remotely real nor realised. It’s merely a conveniently far-flung land where strange things can happen, yet firmly rooted in a familiar Tudor world of great houses and box hedges, butts of ale and casks of sweet Spanish wine. Shakespeare’s Illyria is clearly within hailing distance of the Thames Watermen, with visitors from Messaline putting up ‘in the south suburbs, at The Elephant’ – as did many visitors to London (hence the Elephant & Castle).
So while Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a brace of obviously Anglo-Saxon buffoons, rub shoulders with exotically named characters like Orsino, Antonio, and Malvolio, these would all have been instantly recognisable types to the groundlings packed into the playhouse yard of The Rose or The Globe… Orsino, the effete, capricious aristocrat; Antonio, the seaman-adventurer struck from the mould of Hawkins, Drake and Raleigh; and Malvolio, the killjoy puritan stuffed-shirt.
In the interests of duration (about an hour in each half) and clarity, we’ve made some cuts to the text here and there, notably to many of Feste’s extended quips. These were no doubt hugely funny to an Elizabethan audience, but 400 years later many of these jokes, topical references, and allusions to classical mythology have lost all meaning and will simply puzzle a modern-day audience.
Our aim is to present Twelfth Night in the spirit in which we guess it was intended to be played – an exhilarating romantic romp, shot through with a vein of wistful lyricism, full of music and song, and rounded off with a quicksilver exuberance and delight in life.
With more songs than any other Shakespeare play, as Orsino says, ‘If music be the food of love, play on’
