twelfth night

• Zoe Wanamaker

  "Viola is the catalyst of the play"
• Bloom

  "Twelfth night has no genre"
• Kerr

  "Laughter always erupts when the situation becomes hopeless"
• Pepys 1663


  "a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day"
• Manningham 1602

  "a good practice"
• 2017 National Theatre


  - Tamsin Grieg as Malvolia, feminine, closeted melancholy

  -comic yet puritan, pageboy haircut

  - circular stage, constancy of love

  - West African Sebastian
• Murray 1869


  "silvery undertone of sadness"
• 2012 Globe theatre


  -all male

  -Mark rylance as Olivia, intelligent and graceful, not manly

  - Maria as catalyst for malvolio's trick

  - 'original practices' music, clothing, oak theatre, new and old

  -Malvolio bush scene, "I am happy"
• Thomas

  "gender fluidity serves as the play's central dramatic irony"
• Deception

  "conceal me what I am" Viola pretends to be a eunuch

  "There is no darkness but ignorance"- Feste, wise enough to play the fool- pranksters are deceived/blinded by comedy
• Carnivalesque

  "my masters are you mad?"- Malvolio, upside down

  "wherein the pregnant enemy does much"- devilish, evil is performed in disguise, knows the anguish of love as she is too a woman
• Viola's soliloquy

  "it is too hard a knot me me t'untie"- time, audience know Sebastian can solve it
• Love


  "Diana's lip is not more smooth and rubious"- Orsino, classical allusion, ironic, female goddess of fertility, physicality
• Status

  "unaffectioned ass"- Maria, pretentious and shallow, flatterer and desperate for status

  "some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them"- letter, joy to move up ladder,
• Needy

  Malvolio is a scapegoat who is punished for flaws others share
• Greer

  the inconstancy of men and the solidarity and truth of women
• Michael Dobson

  Twelfth night is very much a play about the potential hazards of dressing up