Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare
Jonathan Crewe (Editor)
ISBN 9780143128595
eISBN 9780698410794
ASIN B0177AGOU0
Five years back I started reading Shakespeare again, as my children were being introduced to it in High school. Then two years ago my son who is now 16 found he had a love for the Bard and for his plays, much as I did at that age. We had been sticking to the Oxford School Shakespeare editions as those were the versions they were reading in school. This year we picked up tickets for three Shakespeare plays at The Stratford Festival, including this play. We picked up this edition to read together before going to see the play. The Pelican Classics were among my favourite editions of the plays when I was a youth myself. I often hunted used bookstores for the hard cover edition. I think the last time I read this would have been about 35-40 years ago. And even though I have not yet seen a production it came back quickly. The description of this edition states:
“This edition of Twelfth Night is edited with an introduction by Jonathan Crewe and was recently repackaged with cover art by Manuja Waldia. Waldia received a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators for the Pelican Shakespeare series.
The legendary Pelican Shakespeare series features authoritative and meticulously researched texts paired with scholarship by renowned Shakespeareans. Each book includes an essay on the theatrical world of Shakespeare’s time, an introduction to the individual play, and a detailed note on the text used. Updated by general editors Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, these easy-to-read editions incorporate over thirty years of Shakespeare scholarship undertaken since the original series, edited by Alfred Harbage, appeared between 1956 and 1967. With stunning new covers, definitive texts, and illuminating essays, the Pelican Shakespeare will remain a valued resource for students, teachers, and theater professionals for many years to come.
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.”
Based on the commonly accepted chronological order of Shakespeare’s plays this is right about the middle of the pack, with a performance recorder in 1601. The sections in this volume prior to the text of the play are:
Publisher’s Note
The Theatrical World
William Shakespeare Of Stratford-Upon-Avon, Gentleman
The Question Of Authorship
The Texts of Shakespeare
Introduction
Note on the Text
Twelfth Night or What You Will
Names of the Actors
I.1 Enter Orsino Duke of Illyria, Curio, and other Lords [with Musicians].
I.2 Enter Viola, a Captain, and Sailors.
I.3 Enter Sir Toby and Maria.
I.4 Enter Valentine, and Viola in man’s attire.
I.5 Enter Maria and Clown.
II.1 Enter Antonio and Sebastian.
II.2 Enter Viola and Malvolio at several doors.
II.3 Enter Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.
II.4 Enter Duke, Viola, Curio, and others.
II.5 Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian.
III.1 Enter Viola and Clown [with a tabor].
III.2 Enter Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Fabian.
III.3 Enter Sebastian and Antonio.
III.4 Enter Olivia and Maria.
IV.1 Enter Sebastian and Clown.
IV.2 Enter Maria and Clown.
IV.3 Enter Sebastian.
V.1 Enter Clown and Fabian.
Jonathan Crewe in the introduction states:
“IN A MEMOIR entitled Shakespearean Playgoing, 1890–1952 (London, 1953), Gordon Crosse wrote, “a really good performance of Twelfth Night is the perfection of pleasure that Shakespearean acting can give, at any rate in comedy.” Much has changed today, including the staging and reception of Shakespeare’s plays, yet Crosse’s verdict would still be echoed by many theatergoers.
In what does this perfection consist? Although any answer must be speculative, the common testimony of readers and theatergoers would suggest that the play is singularly accessible and unthreatening; that its characters are generally engaging and its situations amusing; that its language is eloquent and sometimes magical; that its romantic intensity is rendered all the more appealing by Shakespeare’s delicate irony; that its humor is “dry” (the play’s own term) rather than harsh; that many of its characters, with the touchingly sorry exception of Sir Andrew Aguecheek, show a dazzling capacity for repartee; that the entertainment provided, by turns poignant and witty, sensitive and robust, verbal and musical, never palls; that its comic plots and motifs are skillfully integrated; that it is, generally speaking, a reader- and actor-friendly play. Paradoxically, the play’s aristocratic settings and characters may, like those of Love’s Labor’s Lost, add to its popular appeal; the real or imagined lives of the gentry make an ever-pleasing spectacle.
It would be easy, despite all the virtues of Twelfth Night, to question the play’s “perfection” by drawing attention to recognized minor imperfections in the text or to unresolved tensions and numerous loose ends in the play. Indeed, it is difficult to overlook the darker, more disillusioning moments in Twelfth Night – among them, its ending with the melancholic clown, soaked to the skin, alone onstage – as well as the persistence in the play of cruel spectacle, such as the tormenting of Malvolio, for which bearbaiting is one of the play’s own recurrent metaphors. Yet the image of Twelfth Night as the perfect Shakespearean comedy persists, perhaps because many readers and audiences will have it so in keeping with the play’s alternative title, What You Will.”
And the introduction concludes with:
“Through the exposure of Malvolio – but of a strangely provocative Olivia, too? – in this scene of bad reading, the play suggests what does not belong to ideal gentility, hence to Twelfth Night. Power seeking, arrogant authority, self-centeredness, violence, sexual explicitness, forced interpretation are all to be excluded – but so, it would seem, are people who don’t really belong anyway. The plot that exposes Malvolio is also an outing of the outsider, the “hidden” threat he represents in the gentle world thus being exposed (a strategy that threatens to backfire, of course, if, as an outsider with the law on his side, Malvolio cannot be brought back in again and reconciled).
Paradoxically, it is Malvolio’s excess of desire rather than any lack of it that makes him seem dangerous. He may feel uncomfortable when, deceived by the letter, he appears before Olivia cross-gartered, wearing yellow stockings, and smiling continuously (thus making a pitiful fool of himself), yet this new costume also reveals an extravagant Malvolio belied by his habitual sobriety in office as a steward. It is at such wild extravagance and drastic metamorphosis that the play apparently balks, partly in its own defense, and partly in defense of its ideally gentle world.
As much as Malvolio is an agent of repression in the play, he is ultimately the object of its repression. Shakespeare’s humorously tolerant and generally expansive treatment of identity in Twelfth Night has its repressive, scathing counterpart in the treatment of Malvolio. If Malvolio remains a somewhat haunting figure, it is perhaps chiefly for that reason, but also because he stands for some common human realities (being at a social disadvantage, being literal, being greedy, being gullible, being self-centered) that are not only disowned in the play but subjected to overkill. Although Maria is the author of the letter that deceives Malvolio, his reading it aloud makes him primarily responsible for that letter’s humorously de-idealizing reminder of the private parts and bodily functions the idealized Olivia shares with ordinary mortals. Malvolio cannot be exposed, in other words, without some of the limits and conditions of gentle Shakespearean comedy being exposed as well.
For John Manningham in 1602, Twelfth Night evidently provoked no second thoughts. For us it may do so. In any event, the play’s alternative title, What You Will, transfers responsibility for the play to successive readers and theater audiences, without whose collaboration it would perish in any case. Resistance to this transfer of responsibility as well as a desire to keep the pleasures of Twelfth Night pure and simple is revealed by those editors and critics who insist that as a title “what you will” means no more than “call it what you like.” Yet the meaning of the alternative title cannot be arbitrarily restricted in this way, and the attempt is only self-betraying. For better or worse, the play lends itself both to social reflection and self-reflection. Refusal of this task is certainly compatible with the spirited defense of pleasure in the play, yet it amounts to a refusal to read the play to its fullest effect – or to be read by it. In this respect, what “you” will remains both a collective and an individual choice.”
This play comprises 5 acts and a total of 18 scenes. The story is an intriguing look at identity, concept of self, concepts of possession. The formatting in this digital edition is well done (See note below)
With a dual form of dyslexia I greatly prefer eBooks. I do so because I can change the colour of the page and the font, and also change the font. I really wish that with eBooks of plays such as this one that there would be 2 copies of the play. One completely unadorned, no footnotes or end notes. And the other with the usual accompanying notes. I want a reader’s edition of the play to just be able to read it. Second if that is not to happen, I wish the notes were at the end of the act or even the end of the whole play. But that is just a personal preference. The Pelican Classics were originally published between 1956 and 1967. The Complete Pelican Shakespeare was first published in 1969. With this edition having copyright dates of 1958, 1972, 2000, and 2016. Making it one of the most currently revised that I have read. I believe the Pelican if one of the few editions to have released all 38 plays and the volume of Sonnets, as separate editions. Some other academic publishers limited to specific popular editions, and even then have not released eBooks of them all. (OUP School Shakespeare less than half have eBook editions) As such I am thankful that all 39 volumes from this series are available and available digitally.
I am glad I picked this up to read with my son before going to see a performance later in the year. It reminded me how much I loved these editions when I was young and we have started collecting the eBook versions now. If you are looking for a good copy of the play to read or study I can easily recommend this edition.
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