William Shakespeares Twelfth Night 1 On Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

1. On Twelfth Night (prior to Shakespeare play) people celebrate in masquerades; servants often dressed up as their masters, men as women etc. Based on the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia at the same time of year (characterised by drunken revelry and inversion of the social order; masters became slaves for a day, and vice versa) this is the cultural origin of the play’s gender confused driven plot. THE SECRET OF THE TITLE

2. Malvolio the stern-butultimately-undone steward of Lady Olivia is a very popular and loved character among actors, having been played on stage and screen several times.

modernises the story as a contemporary teenage US comedy. Instead of an island Illyria is a prep school and incorporates the names of most of the play’s major characters. Orsino, Duke of Illyria becomes simply Duke Orsino. The story was changed to revolve around the idea of football (or soccer as they call it in the US!) rivalry but the twisted / love triangle romance remained the same as the Shakespearean original. Viola, pretends to be her brother Sebastian, and tries to woo Olivia for her room-mate Duke. However Olivia falls in love with Viola (as Sebastian) and Viola falls in love with Duke (who thinks she is Sebastian).

4. In March 2017, the Royal National Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night changed some of the roles from male to female, including Fabian (which became Fabia), and most notably, Malvolio – which became Malvolia. As a result, the production played with sexuality as well as gender.

5. Henry VIII, George Washington and George Bush (senior) all celebrated Twelfth Night by getting married on that day, in 1540, 1759 and 1945.

6. The faces of our Twelfth Night twins Viola and Sebastian (played by Zoe Bloss and Owen Lewis) might be familiar. Zoe appeared in our 2015 performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Snout and Owen played Tybalt and Paris in last year’s Romeo & Juliet.

7. Twelfth Night contains a number of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes including “If music be the food of love, play on” and “Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit”

8. The first (recorded) performance of Twelfth Night was on 2 February 1602.

9. The play has been turned into a musical on numerous occasions. These include Your Own Thing (1968), Music Is (1977), the Elvis Presley jukebox musical All Shook Up (2005), and the Tony award winning Duke Ellington jukebox musical Play On! (1997).

10. In Elizabethan London all stage plays were performed by male actors who cross-dressed in order to play the parts of women. So in Twelfth Night the heroine Viola would have been played by a male actor cross – dressing as a female character who in Twelfth Night cross dresses as a man! In C 16 th Puritans who argued that crossdressing was sinful, wicked and monstrous and that it promoted sexual transformation.

11. Following his open air role as Sir Toby Belch, Ivanhoe Norona will be appearing in season two of the Netflix Original series The Crown (getting promoted from a Sir to a King!)

12. Samuel Pepys writes of “Twelfth Day” in 1663 when he saw Shakespeare’s comedy, finding it “a silly play and not relating at all to the name or the day”.

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