January 5: Twelfth Night

Tonight is Twelfth Night, so today I am featuring the play of that name by William Shakespeare.

1. The full title of the play is Twelfth Night, or What You Will.
2. The first recorded performance wasn't on twelfth night, but on 2^nd February (Candlemas) 1602. Which, incidentally was the date on which Christmas decorations were traditionally taken down in Shakespeare's time. Today, of course, they are supposed to come down on twelfth night.
3. The play wasn't published until 1623.
4. The setting is a fictional kingdom called Illyria, possibly based on the name of a region in Classical Greek times, which now includes Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Albania.
5. The plot is as follows (spoiler alert). Twins Viola and Sebastian are shipwrecked, and separated in the chaos. Viola, thinking her brother is dead, dresses up as a boy, calls herself Cesario and gets a job working for Duke Orsino. S/he is tasked with conveying messages of love to Countess Olivia. Olivia, believing Cesario is a man, falls in love with him rather than Orsino. Meanwhile, one of Olivia's servants, Malvolio, is also in love with Olivia. Sir Toby Belch, his friend Sir Andrew and a maid, Maria, decide to play a joke on Malvolio. They write a letter to him, allegedly from Olivia, asking him to do strange things to prove his love. Which he does, and ends up locked in a room because people think he has gone mad. Meanwhile, Sebastian isn't dead at all but was rescued by his friend Antonio and duly shows up. He resembles “Cesario” enough for Olivia to mistake him for Orsino's messenger. She asks Sebastian to marry her. He's taken aback, but agrees. Eventually, the twins are reunited and Cesario reverts to being Viola. Orsino asks her to marry him. The play ends with Malvolio, who is finally set free, vowing revenge on everybody.
6. Samuel Pepys didn't care for the play much, writing in his diary that he thought it was ‘acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day’. That said, it must have been a quiet time for theatre, as he went to see it three times.
7. On the other hand, Arthur Conan Doyle may have liked it a lot, since his character Sherlock Holmes quotes from it twice, whereas no other Shakespeare play gets more than one mention from the famous sleuth. For this somewhat flaky reason The Baker Street Irregulars deduced Sherlock Holmes’s birthday must be 6 January (although twelfth night is actually January 5 – January 6 is twelfth day).
8. Twelfth Night is the only Shakespeare play which doesn't include the words ‘child’ or ‘children’.
9. The title of one of Agatha Christie's novels, Sad Cypress, derives from a song in Act II, Scene IV of Twelfth Night.
10. A number of modern day musicals and films are based on this play including Your Own Thing, Music Is, All Shook Up, Play On! and She's the Man, a romantic comedy set in Illyria High School, California. The film Shakespeare in Love makes references to it, too - Shakespeare's love interest in the film, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, is the daughter of a wealthy merchant who disguises herself as a boy to become an actor. Her name is Viola.

I write fiction, too! My characters include some British superheroes and a psychic detective. You never know, your new favourite could be here! You won't know unless you look...

See details of all my books

Browse other topics I've covered in this blog - HERE.

Like my Facebook page for news of Topical Ten posts, posts on my writing blog, and news of upcoming publications.

Follow me on Twitter, Pinterest  and Google Plus