Twelfth Night

Critical Essays

Stanley Wells

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317532316
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism of Shakespeare
• Index: Literature

Originally published in 1986. Among the most frequently performed and high admired of Shakespeare's plays, Twelfth Night is examined here in this collection of writings from well-known essayists and scholars. The chapters present to the modern reader discussions of the play to enhance understanding and study of both the text and performances. Opening essays address individual characters; then some accounts of its potential and theatrical reviews are included; finally followed by critical studies looking at various parts and themes. The editor's introduction explains the usefulness of each chapter and gives an overview of the selection.

TWELFTH NIGHT

Critical Essays

Stanley Wells

© 1986 Stanley Wells

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Main entry under title:

Twelfth night

(Shakespearean criticism ; vol. 3)

Bibliography: p.

1. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616. Twelfth night—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Wells, Stanley W., 1930– . II. Series.

PR2837.W45 1985 822.3′3 85-13029

ISBN 0-8240-9239-2 (alk. paper)

DOI: 10.4324/9781315724898

Printed on acid-free, 250-year-life paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

• General Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• J. B. Priestley, “The Illyrians”
• A. C. Bradley, “Feste the Jester”
• John Russell Brown, “Directions for Twelfth Night”
• Arthur Colby Sprague, “Twelfth Night,” from Shakespeare and the Actors
• Charles Lamb, “On Some of the Old Actors”
• Henry Morley, “Samuel Phelps as Malvolio” (1857)
• Max Beerbohm, “Beerbohm Tree’s Twelfth Night”
• Harley Granville Barker, “Twelfth Night at the Vieux Colombier” (1921)
• Virginia Woolf, “Twelfth Night at the Old Vic” (1933)
• Roy Walker, “Peter Hall’s Production of Twelfth Night” (1958)
• Leslie Hotson, “Illyria for Whitehall”
• C. L. Barber, “Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night”
• Bertrand Evans, “The Fruits of the Sport”
• Harry Levin, “The Underplot of Twelfth Night”
• Harold Jenkins, “Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”
• L. G. Salingar, “The Design of Twelfth Night”
• A. S. Leggatt, “Twelfth Night,” from Shakespeare’s Comedies of Love
• Karen Greif, “Plays and Playing in Twelfth Night”
• Jörg Hasler, “The Dramaturgy of the Ending of Twelfth Night”
• Anne Barton, “Shakespeare’s Sense of an Ending in Twelfth Night”
• Bibliography

General Editor's Preface

The Garland series is designed to bring together the best that has been written about Shakespeare’s plays, both as dramatic literature and theatrical performance. With the exception of some early plays which are treated in related combinations, each volume is devoted to a single play to include the most influential historical criticism, the significant modern interpretations, and reviews of the most illuminating productions. The collections are intended as resource companions to the texts. The scholar, the student, the reader, the director, the actor, the audience, will find here the full range of critical opinion, scholarly debate, and popular taste. Much of the material reproduced has been extremely difficult for the casual reader to locate. Original volumes have long since been out of print; definitive articles have been buried in journals and editions now obscure; theatrical reviews are discarded with each day’s newspaper.

“The best that has been written” about each play is the criterion for selection, and the volumes represent the collective wisdom of foremost Shakespearean scholars throughout the world. Each editor has had the freedom and responsibility to make accessible the most insightful criticism to date for his or her play. I express my gratitude to the team of international scholars who have accepted this challenge. One would like to say with Keats “that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” but the universality of Shakespeare will stimulate new responses, yield fresh meanings, and lead new generations to richer understandings of human nature.

Generally the essays have been reproduced as they appeared originally. Some concessions in punctuation, spelling, and documentation have been made for the sake of conformity. In the case of excerpts, notes have been renumbered to clarify the references. A principle of the series, however, is to reproduce the full text, rather than excerpts, except for digressive material having no bearing on the subject.

Joseph Price

Introduction

Shakespeare was in his mid-thirties and at the height of his powers when, probably in 1601, he wrote Twelfth Night. During the previous ten or more years he had written tragedies—Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, and Hamlet—tragical histories—the three parts of Henry VI, Richard III, King John, Richard II—comical histories—the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V—and comedies—The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and As You Like It. He had been a prominent member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men since their foundation in 1594, and had helped them to become the leading English theatrical company. He might have been resting on his laurels, but Twelfth Night is the culmination of his work in the form of romantic comedy, a masterpiece which was evidently popular in his own day and is now among the most frequently performed and most highly admired of his plays.

Nevertheless, like most of the comedies, it was not greatly to the taste of the later seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Samuel Pepys, in the 1660s, thought it “a silly play” but managed to sit through it three times. After this period it was largely neglected until its theatrical revival in 1741. For the remainder of the eighteenth century it was frequently included in the repertory at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, and (though Pepys had remarked that it was “not related at all to the name or day”) was particularly likely to be performed on or around 6 January. During this time the play was given substantially as written, but in 1820 Frederic Reynolds, along with the composer Henry Bishop, put on at Covent Garden a heavily adapted version introducing “Songs, Glees, and Choruses, the Poetry selected entirely from the Plays, Poems, and Sonnets of Shakespeare.” This adaptation continued in performance at intervals over several years. Shakespeare’s play had been introduced to New York in 1804, and it returned to the London stage in 1846. Since then it has been frequently played not only in the world’s theatres but also, more recently, on radio and television.

Except for notices of performances, some represented in this anthology, there is little lasting criticism of the comedy before the present century. Perhaps this is partly because it is easy to enjoy as both drama and literature. Nevertheless, the passage of time has dimmed some of its significance, which may be restored to us through historical criticism. As a product of Shakespeare’s mature art, the play may be illuminatingly related to the literary and theatrical conventions and traditions that lie behind it, and to its author’s own achievements up to the time of its composition. The history of its performance may be drawn upon for information as to its theatrical potential, and in the attempt to investigate the extent to which our responses to it are liable to be conditioned by its theatrical incarnations and reshapings. And, short though it may be in comparison with some of the other masterpieces of Western literature, the intricacy of its plotting, the resonances of its language, the richness of its ideas, the range and power of its characterization, the complexity of its ironies, the artistry of its dramaturgy, and the reasons for its appeal to later ages are among those aspects of the play that have been valuably explored by generations of critics.

The choice of writings in this volume has been governed, not by historical considerations, but by the aim of presenting to today’s reader those discussions of the play which may most profitably enhance his experience of it both in the study and on the stage. The opening essays, concerned with the play’s characters, are followed by accounts of its potential and actual theatrical realization and then by a selection from the best of the many scholarly and critical studies of its artistry.

J. B. Priestley’s “The Illyrians” comes from his early book The English Comic Characters (1925)—a title which itself justifies the concentration on the persons of the play rather than, for instance, its structure, its poetry, or its theatrical effect. Sensitively written, evocative, the work of a born essayist who was to become one of the few English writers to achieve comparable distinction as both novelist and playwright, it is in the belle-lettrist tradition now somewhat out of fashion; yet its very opening paragraphs introduce us to a central critical issue: “we are more likely to regard Malvolio with some measure of sympathy than was Shakespeare” writes Mr Priestley, adumbrating a theme which recurs in many of these essays. From this appreciation of the play’s characters in general we pass to a single one: “Feste the Jester” by A. C. Bradley, better known for his writings on Shakespeare’s tragedies. This is “character criticism” at its best: not a fantasy taking off from the text but a thoughtful, perceptive view of one of the play’s characters based on a scrupulous examination and exploration of the lines.

Though Bradley generally writes about Shakespeare’s plays as a reader rather than as a theatregoer, he was—as one of the footnotes to this essay shows—not oblivious to their theatrical impact. In the third essay in this collection John Russell Brown, a scholar-critic who has also been very active in the practical theatre, opens our eyes to the variety of effect of which the play is capable in performance. This essay also looks closely at details of the text, but it draws upon memories and accounts of the play in the theatre. Directors a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page 1
• Copyright Page 1
• Table of Contents
• General Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Frontmatter 1
• J. B. Priestley, “The Illyrians”
• A. C. Bradley, “Feste the Jester”
• John Russell Brown, “Directions for Twelfth Night”
• Arthur Colby Sprague, “Twelfth Night,” from Shakespeare and the Actors
• Charles Lamb, “On Some of the Old Actors”
• Henry Morley, “Samuel Phelps as Malvolio” (1857)
• Max Beerbohm, “Beerbohm Tree’s Twelfth Night”
• Harley Granville Barker, “Twelfth Night at the Vieux Colombier” (1921)
• Virginia Woolf, “Twelfth Night at the Old Vic” (1933)
• Roy Walker, “Peter Hall’s Production of Twelfth Night” (1958)
• Leslie Hotson, “Illyria for Whitehall”
• C. L. Barber, “Testing Courtesy and Humanity in Twelfth Night”
• Bertrand Evans, “The Fruits of the Sport”
• Harry Levin, “The Underplot of Twelfth Night”
• Harold Jenkins, “Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”
• L. G. Salingar, “The Design of Twelfth Night”
• A. S. Leggatt, “Twelfth Night,” from Shakespeare’s Comedies of Love
• Karen Greif, “Plays and Playing in Twelfth Night”
• Jörg Hasler, “The Dramaturgy of the Ending of Twelfth Night”
• Anne Barton, “Shakespeare’s Sense of an Ending in Twelfth Night”
• Bibliography