Twelfth Night (Bantam Classic) - Softcover

Shakespeare, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553213083 ISBN 13: 9780553213089

Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1980

Synopsis

Set in a topsy-turvy world like a holiday revel, this comedy devises a romantic plot around separated twins, misplaced passions, and mistaken identity. Juxtaposed to it is the satirical story of a self-deluded steward who dreams of becoming “Count Malvolio” only to receive his comeuppance at the hands of the merrymakers he wishes to suppress. The two plots combine to create a farce touched with melancholy, mixed throughout with seductively beautiful explorations on the themes of love and time, and the play ends, not with laughter, but with a clown’s sad song.

Each Edition Includes:
· Comprehensive explanatory notes
· Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
· Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
· Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
· An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography

About this title

Review:

One of Shakespeare's finest comedies, Twelfth Night was written at the same time as Hamlet and Troilus and Cressida, and whilst it shares their fascination with sex, death and confused identities, its exuberant comedy and linguistic inventiveness rises above the introspection of these plays. Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated in a storm, which washes them both up at different points on the shores of Illyria. Believing each other to be dead, both attempt to survive by using their wits. Viola cross-dresses and enters the service of the lovesick Orsino, in love with Olivia, an heiress in mourning for the loss of her brother. Orsino's saucy young page Cesario (Viola) soon falls in love with "his" master, who tells "him", "all is semblative a woman's part". Unfortunately, whilst Viola falls in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with her alter ego, Cesario, whilst also being pursued at the same time by her pompous servant Malvolio. Olivia's house is also turned upside down by the antics of her drunken uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the whole crazy situation reaches boiling point when Sebastian reappears.

Despite the madcap plot, Twelfth Night remains one of Shakespeare's most complex and inventive comedies, fascinated with questions of cross-dressing, gender confusion, language and inversion, as well as retaining a darker edge to some of its laughter. --Jerry Brotton

Review:

'The combination of careful scholarship emphasising the inspiration and excitement of the theatrical experience, with the freshly edited text, should make this one of the most useful new texts of Twelfth Night.' Theatre Journal

About this edition

• Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0553213083
• ISBN 13: 9780553213089
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Bevington David, Kastan David Scott