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Twelfth Night (Shakespeare Project Lecture) (Patreon)

Published:
2023-12-10 21:13:49
Imported:
2026-06
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  • William Shakespeare TN Lecture .mp3

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Content

'If music be the food of love, play on...'

Our journey through the works of William Shakespeare continues with Twelfth Night.

We’re discussing painful separation, grief, alternate worlds, cross-dressing, inexhaustibility, cruel comedy, becoming ourselves in another, why society needs the fool, and much more.

Timestamps:

  • 0:00 the pain beneath the comedy
  • 2:00 the power of rereading Shakespeare
  • 4:00 treating the work as closet drama
  • 5:00 spending time in the land of Ilyria
  • 7:00 painful separation & hopeful reunion
  • 8:00 grief & despair in the two courts
  • 10:00 Shakespeare’s personal self-talk
  • 11:00 why mourn for one in heaven?
  • 12:00 ‘and what should I do in Ilyria?’
  • 13:00 Viola, Sebastian & the bard’s twins
  • 14:00 the shipwreck of our lives
  • 15:00 what do great comedies do?
  • 17:00 Will’s sonnets & misprisoning
  • 20:00 cross-dressing in Shakespeare
  • 22:00 on the character of Malvolio
  • 24:00 Will’s inexhaustible heterocosm
  • 25:00 becoming ourselves in another
  • 26:00 Viola talks love with Orsino
  • 28:00 Shakespeare on men & women
  • 30:00 difference between love & lust
  • 31:00 ‘we men may say more…’
  • 33:00 ‘I am all the daughters…’
  • 35:00 Viola talks love with Olivia
  • 37:00 ‘I am not what I am…’
  • 40:00 recognition, reunion & rebirth
  • 43:00 ‘for the rain it raineth every day’
  • 44:00 why society needs the fool
  • 47:00 The Phoenix and the Turtle
  • 51:00 what did you make of this play?

Recommended Resources:

  • Musical Appreciation: Alfred Deller's 'Hey, ho, the wind and the rain' here is astonishingly beautiful and also rather haunting. Ben Kingsley also delivers his superb rendition of Feste's song in Trevor Nunn's film version here.
  • Recommended Edition: The Arden edition continues to make a superb choice as the introduction and footnotes are especially illuminating for this play.
  • Film Adaptation: You might like to check out Trevor Nunn's 1996 film with the wonderful Helena Bonham-Carter. For those interested in early cinema, Charles Kent's 1910 black-and-white film condenses the play into around ten minutes and is well worth a watch.
  • Audio Dramatisation: David Tennant is excellent as Malvolio in this brilliant BBC radio drama, and it's well worth listening to this one whilst reading simultaneously.
  • Theatre: In 2012, Tim Carrol directed a production of Twelfth Night that sought to reconnect with the first performance with a hilarious all-male cast. National treasure Stephen Fry was incredible in the role of Malvolio. You can see him in his yellow stockings here.
  • Book Recommendation: If you're interested in the development of the theatre, particularly as it applies to the history of English acting, then you might like to check out Peter Ackroyd's tremendous work called The English Actor: From Medieval to Modern here.
  • Our Journey Thus Far: If you want to jump into any specific play, you can check out the works we've enjoyed thus far as part of our read-through here.

Questions for You:

1) At this stage, do you prefer Shakespeare's comedies, tragedies, or histories?

2) Do men and women love differently? And how would you define true love?

3) What line, passage, idea, or character most resonated with you? And what is your personal grading for Twelfth Night?

Happy reading, Bardolators!

Files

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Comments

Jennifer Vo

Really enjoyed this play. I haven't read Shakespeare in almost two years, coming back to him now with a first reading of Twelfth Night. I felt this was a magically twisted, hilarious, beautifully complex play with chaotic side plots and very gripping scenes. The pacing was delightful, I felt that every part of each act in this play was carefully constructed to ebb and flow with the comedic timing of the play itself and build on the plot. From a first time Twelfth Night reader, I felt that delicious pull of anticipation as the storyline progressed. I know a lot of Shakespeare plays are very good, but sometimes I forget just how talented a storyteller William was. This lecture was very eye-opening as I did not realize that Shakespeare had twin children. It is heartbreaking that he lost his son, and adds even more color to this play. I have always found the concept of doppelgangers to be eerie and frightening, but I absolutely loved the final scene where Viola and Sebastian realize one another. I agree with others that the ending tied together a bit unnaturally, and I was honestly expecting more bloody death (probably Ben's doing, saying comedies tend to end as tragedies) however I like to believe this is a very "Disney" ending. The scene could have resulted in a lot more bloodshed and regret after the truth came out. I do regret that I did not read the entirety of the play in one sitting. It is short enough to do so, and next time I'll make a note of really setting aside a few hours as I think it's worth it to attempt a full immersion into Shakespeare's worlds.

Paul Servini

I've just realied that my answer above got trunczted somehow. The poem I mentioned is "It is not beauty I demand" by Georhe Darley and it expresses far better than I could what true love really is.

Ylva

I so much appreciate these lectures. They help me see what’s hidden from my sight and deepen my understanding of the things I maybe already did catch a glimpse of. It’s like being given a universal key for a huge mansion and suddenly finding brilliant rooms you didn’t know existed. Reading Twelfth Night once more makes me realise how much I struggle with Shakespeare’s comedies. I loved my recent Hamlet read, and can only agree with another club member’s comment that Hamlet is so outstanding that it so easily overshadows all the rest. This likely contributed to my feeling of pulling teeth with this play, but the crossdressing trope simply doesn’t do it for me, and Malvolio’s side story wasn’t any better to experience…then again, I’ve always had trouble with pranksters, and maybe it simply hits too close to home. I find this sad since it denies me access to the appreciation for what I can feel must be a great work of literature. Yet reading this play was like running against a concrete wall over and over again for me, and delight (even in the challenge, or the dissection of themes, or the poetry) simply didn’t happen. So enjoyment-wise, this was so bad it is an E rating for me. Which makes me feel embarrassed looking at the earnest, heartbreaking themes addressed in this play, and Will’s humanity seeping through. Am I simply too earnest (perhaps even uptight? or simply too branded?) for this kind of humour? I’ve always been an advocate for gender-equality that starts first and foremost with mutual understanding and respect, the forgetting about gender so we can meet the actual people and their character, and I absolutely love and appreciate Shakespeare’s mindset on this that runs like a thread through all his plays. My heart also aches for the pain he worked through with Twelfth Night. Everything I read from him shows what a caring, sensitive, and strong soul he was. What a beautiful advocate for humanity we have in him and his creations, in his legacy. None of this helps me to access this play, however. Not today. Though I did get more from it this time, at any rate, than I remember doing so during my first read as a teen. Baby steps, eh? 🙈 At any rate: tragedies for me first, followed by the histories and the comedies after both. “In nature there’s no blemish but the mind: None can be called deformed but the unkind.”

Alex
>>178651043

Just read this one and felt the same - feels like it suffers a bit from being in Hamlet's shadow.