Here is a sample annotated bibliography for Twelfth Night
Twelfth Night
Barber, C.L. “Liberty Testing Courtesy.” Twentieth Century Interpretations of Twelfth Night. Ed. By Walter N. King. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968. 45-52.
Folly in Twelfth Night is of misrule. Viola is able to pull off disguise because of her courtesy. Barber reminds the reader that Van Doren compared Twelfth Night to Merchant of Venice in the creation of a world of music and melancholy. Also, he explores the comparison between Sir Toby and Falstaff. He discusses language: verse of the court vs the prose of others. Also he discusses the role of some of the more minor characters: Fabian, Maria, Malvolio. And he connects SirToby’s revelries with real life escapades of Sir Edward Dymoke. Part of Malvolio’s vice is that he wants to make Twelfth Night misrule permanent by becoming the master—again a comparison to Merchant, between Malvolio and Shylock, is made. **
Topics covered: Sir Toby, minor characters, misrule
Barnet, Sylvan. “Charles Lamb and the Tragic Malvolio.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 53-62.
Barnet focuses on Charles Lamb’s evaluation of the acting of Robert Bensky in the role of Malvolio (representative of 19th century views on acting). Bensky played Malvolio as a tragic figure, changing him from a comic figure. Most of the other 20th century critics reject this interpretation. [But Laurence Olivier’s version is also tragic in vision.] Barnet suggests Lamb may have wanted to romanticize Malvolio since his own father was a servant. -
Topics covered: Malvolio
**Charles, Casey. “Gender Trouble in Twelfth Night.” Theater Journal 49 (1997): 121-141.
Charlton, H.B. “The Consummation.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 90-96.
Charlton discusses Twelfth Night as a Romantic Comedy, exhibiting traits of both genres, compares Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, in all of which the main characters woo in non-traditional ways. Heroines represent Shakespeare’s ideal in love. Shakespeare’s men have intellect, imagination, passion, but are not in harmony with themselves; women are balanced, intuitive, responsive to emotion, witty. The women are doers and inspirers of action. Twelfth Night is concerned with the disclosure of imbalanced sentiments (like Orsino’s love and Olivia’s grief). **
Topics covered: comedy, wooing
*Dawkins, Peter. The Wisdom of Shakespeare in Twelfth Night. Warwickshire, England: I.C Media, 2002.
Downer, Alan S. “Feste’s Exposure of Orsino.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 100-101.
Feste gives us a better, more realistic view of Duke Orsino. The love song he calls for is mostly about death. Is Feste mocking Orsino? Since Orsino dismisses both Feste and the court shortly after he finishes his song, they may all have been snickering at him and his melancholy. *
Topics covered: Orsino, Feste, music
Goddard, Harold C. “The Third Degree of . . .” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 99.
All the characters (except Viola or Sebastian) are suffering from excess of something in Twelfth Night. Goddard argues against a comparison between Sir Toby and Falstaff. Sir Toby is in the 3rd degree of drink, Feste of wit, Sir Andrew of fatuity, Maria of jealousy or of cruelty. –
Topics covered: vices of minor characters
*Greif, Karen. “A Star of Born: Feste on the Modern Stage.” Shakespeare Quarterly find volume info 61-78.
Hollander, John. “’Twelfth Night’ and the Moralilty of Indulgence.” Modern. 228-244. also found in Twentieth Twelfth Night. 75-89.
In early 1600 comedy began to moralize more under the influence of Ben Jonson. Jonson’s characters often represented humours (vices). Shakespeare acted in John’s Every Man in his Humous and Hollander claims Twelfth Night, written a year or two later, seems to be dramatically opposed in tone. He claims Orsino’s first lines are a proem of the whole play. The eating motif is particularly important. Malvolio over-rationalizes where Orsino over-sentimentalizes; they are two opposites. M A O I probably stand for Mare, Orbis, Aer, and Ignis—the four elements. The prank played on Malvolio reflects the whole play. Feste’s last song compares to the “Seven Ages of Man” speech from As You Like It. *
Topics covered: comedy, eating
Hotson, Leslie. “Punning in Feste’s Final Song.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 105-108.
Feste’s last song is often dismissed as having a nice turn but little reason, as nonsense. But the fool’s role in the Renaissance was most often connected with ribaldry. Robert Armin’s (the actor who played Feste) presentation of this song was so popular that Shakespeare added another stanza in King Lear. Hotson discusses the sexual inferences of bauble, well-hanged, etc. He clarifies the line in King Lear where the fool says “laughs at my departure” to read “at my deporter,” another word for bauble. Hotson interprets the last song to be about the levels of drunkenness. **
Topics covered: sexual innuendos, Feste, music
Hunter, G.K. “Plot and Subplot in Twelfth Night.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 97-98.
For Viola, at the beginning of the play, happiness is unlikely to be fulfilled so Patience on a Monument is appropriate. Hunter claims Orsino and Olivia are in part to blame for the vices of Malvolio and Sir Toby. None of the characters want to be known for what they are. It is not just a golden time because the class struggle is evident. *
Topics covered: vices, appearance vs. reality
King, Walter N. “Introduction.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 1-14.
Shakespeare was between 35 and 36 when he wrote Twelfth Night, a recognized poet with half of his plays already written. Hamlet was written shortly thereafter. Twelfth Night has underlying melancholy, desires beyond mere romantic vision, limitations of nature of human reality, but also faith in human goodness. The focus of the play is romance itself, though the plot is improbable (separation of shipwrecked twins reunited at the end), mistaken identity. Shakespeare both spoofs and embraces Petrarchan, Neoplatonic, Ovidian conventions of love. The world of holiday is balanced against the workaday world. The comedies of the 90’s were romantic in tone, realistic in essence. Death is not ignored (Feste’s song “Come Away Death”) but certainly not central as in Hamlet. Shakespeare refuses to be reductive, shows ambiguity in characters. King claims Twelfth Night is about changing perspectives which are enlightening for main characters, not so for minor characters. King discusses the duality of Cesario who is both Viola and Sebastian; “A natural perspective that is and is not” is illustrated throughout. The play begins with excess (reference to Lord of Misrule). Sir Toby and Malvolio are two opposites in excess. Orsino and Olivia discover what love is by reaching out to and being changed by Cesario’s perspective on love. Who one is depends on what one wants. Wit (reason employed with integrity) is the opposite of will (desire, intention). Olivia and Orsino fall in love with character traits, not physical ones. The play opens outward to a variety of interpretations, explains festival atmosphere of the 12th night ceremony but also is preparatory for Epiphany—order. ***
Topics covered: romance vs comedy, world view, perspective or point of view
Ko, Yu Jin. “The Comic Close of Twelfth Night and Viola’s Noli me Tangere.” Shakespeare Quarterly 48.4 (Winter 1997): 392-405.
Ko compares Viola’s refusal to embrace Sebastian at the end of the play to Mary Magdelene’s first view of Christ after He rose and not being able to touch Him, suggesting both the pain of not embracing and joy in the meeting. *
Topics covered: Christian symbolism
Leech, Clifford. “Twelfth Night, or What Delights You.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 70-74.
By defining tragedy as “a view of the universe in which man’s sureness of defeat is seen at odds with his magnitude of spirit,” we can easily see why he refutes Lamb’s view that Malvolio is a tragic figure and asserts that Twelfth Night must be seen as comedic. He compares Malvolio to Parolles from All’s Well. Also, Antonio’s sense of failed friendship is a parallel to Valentine and Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona. Twelfth Night will not end in uniformity of happiness and this strengthens the play. *
Topics covered: comedy, Malvolio
Markels, Julian. “Shakespeare’s Confluence of Tragedy and Comedy: Twelfth Night and King Lear.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 63-69.
In the two plays Markels refers to in the title, both fools attempt to prove their “masters” foolish. Then Olivia plays the fool to correct Malvolio. Plays are also linked though the clothing metaphor. The fool in Twelfth Night succeeds in curing Malvolio while Lear’s fool does not. –
Topics covered: role of fool
Merchant, W. Moelwyn. “Theological Punning in Twelfth Night.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 104.
Merchant associates Olilvia’s tears, her “eye offending brine” with holy water. Feste often cites scripture, his interchange with Maria in which she says he provides “a good Lenten answer” plays on the church’s ceremony at Lent. –
Topics covered: religious symbolism
*Muir, Kenneth, and Sean O’Loughlin. The Voyage to Illyria. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1937.
Salinger, L.G. “The Design of Twelfth Night.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 24-30.
Does Twelfth Night vindicate romance or deprecate it? Who is the main character? These are questions Salinger wants to answer. The time of misrule informs the construction of the play. Feste is not needed for the plot but affects the other characters more than any other of Shakespeare’s fools. Everything is topsy-turvy: women are aggressive in wooing; love is folly contrasted to the wisdom of stoicism. Shakespeare plays on the audience’s view that opposition exists between love and reason, hence connecting the main plot and subplot thematically. Salinger ties Twelfth Night to its sources, shows how Shakespeare changes the source material. He calls Twelfth Night “the most subtle portrayal of the psychology of love that Shakespeare has yet drawn” (30). *
Topics covered: romance, misrule, sources
Smith, Bruce R., ed. William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. New York: Bedford, 2001.
*Smith, Peter J. “M.A.O.I. ‘What should that alphabetical position portend?’ An answer to the Metamorphic Malvolio.” Renaissance Quarterly 51.4 (Winter 1998): 1199-1229.
Summers, Joseph H. “The Masks of Twelfth Night.” Modern Essays. 134-143. also found in Twentieth Twelfth Night. 15-23.
Love is central to the comedies, and conflicts are presented as a battle of generalizations, but not in Twelfth Night. But characters in Twelfth Night do not know themselves at the beginning of the play—all wear masks; some are aware of them, some not. Orsino and Olivia take on poses but Summers says they really conceal boredom. Even Sebastian, who assumes no disguise, is misrecognized as Cesario. Feste is the professional masquer but he is getting old, needing to retain his mask to retain his employment. Viola wears the mask but wants to discard it later when it becomes a burden. “Virtue in disguise is only totally triumphant when evil is not in disguise” also. *
Topics covered: disguise, love
Van Doren, Mark. “Sir Toby Belch and His Milieu.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 102-103.
Sir Toby is old-fashioned and functionless, but Olivia will not turn him away. As Sir Toby resists Malvolio in “Does thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” he represents the old world resisting the new. Feste’s motive in participating in the jest is stated at the end, but others have no such motivations. Van Doren says Malvolio’s Puritanism offends them as a class. *
Topics covered: Malvolio, Feste, jest, Puritanism
Williams, Porter, Jr. “Mistakes in Twelfth Night and Their Resolution: A Study in Some Relationships of Plot and Theme.” Twentieth Twelfth Night. 31-44.
Mistakes characters make are like Freudian slips; they reveal subconscious patterns of human behavior. This is appropriate based on the title referring to the Twelfth Night feast in which everything is topsy-turvy. Disguises and deceptions are rampant in Twelfth Night, physical disguises like Viola and Feste or psychological ones as Olivia disguised as one overwhelmed by grief, which fools only Olivia herself. Orsino also descends into love melancholy (like Romeo for Rosaline), thinking he can love only Olivia. Sebastian also part of the deception, unwittingly disguised as Cesario. Mistakes can be good—Olivia’s mistaken love for Cesario prepares her to love Sebastian. A generous spirit is associated with love. Light and dark imagery also helps reveal mistakes. Petrarchan love at first sight is possible for Olivia when she sees Sebastian because of her opening up to Cesario. These relationships are like Beatrice and Benedict in Much Ado about Nothing, stormy preparation helps us accept quick avowals of love. Viola’s “patience on a monument” speech makes her a foil to Olivia’s patient 7-year grief for her brother. Viola is also like Desdemona as she turns to follow Orsino after he has threatened to kill “him.” **
Topics covered: disguise, love, imagery, foils