Despite Manningham's confusion over details, the play was certainly Shakespeare's Twelfth Night performed by the Lord Chamberlain's (later King's) Men, probably with Shakespeare himself among the cast. It is generally assumed that Robert Armin, the company clown known for his singing and musical abilities, would have played Feste, with the notoriously thin John Sincklo as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
The play was probably written in 1601; it has been suggested that it may have been written for and first performed at court on Twelfth Night (6 January) 1601 before Elizabeth I and her guest, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano.2 It was later performed before James I on Easter Monday 1618 and again at Candlemas in 1623, when it was simply called Malvolio. Charles I wrote this alternative title in his own Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays. The character's popularity is attested in Leonard Digges' 1640 commendatory verse to the first edition of Shakespeare's collected poems:
... Let but Beatrice
And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice
The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full
To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull.3
After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the reopening of the theaters, which were closed during the civil war and Interregnum (1642-60), Shakespeare's plays were divided up between the two licensed companies. Major innovations in performance style were introduced with movable scenery, creating a more visual, illusionist theater, and the presence of women onstage. Twelfth Night was assigned to William d'Avenant's Duke of York's Men. Shakespeare's comedies did not suit the taste of the new age though. Samuel Pepys saw three productions of Twelfth Night between 1661 and 1669, none of which he enjoyed, even though the leading actor of the age, Thomas Betterton, played Sir Toby Belch. Indeed, Pepys thought it "one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage."4 In 1703 William Burnaby produced Love Betray'd, or, The Agreeable Disappointment, an adaptation which retained only around sixty of Shakespeare's lines but failed in its attempt to update the play to suit contemporary tastes. "More radical transformations, such as William Wycherley's The Plain Dealer or Pierre Marivaux's The False Servant," which used Shakespeare's play as source material, were more successful.5
It was not until David Garrick's production at the Theatre Royal in 1741 with Charles Macklin as Malvolio, Hannah Pritchard as Viola, and Kitty Clive as Olivia that Shakespeare's Twelfth Night enjoyed popularity and success once more. Macklin's casting as Malvolio thrust the character into prominence, as the earliest productions had done. As with his Shylock in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Macklin's psychological interpretation altered the perception of both characters, bringing out the pathos of the roles, making them more sympathetic, even "quasi-tragic figures."6 This effect was subsequently intensified in Robert Bensley's performance in John Philip Kemble's production, of which Charles Lamb wrote, "I confess, that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest."7 Kemble's 1811 production was the first to reverse the order of the first two scenes of the play--a strategy since adopted by numerous directors.
In the early nineteenth century emphasis was given to the play's musical and spectacular potential. Frederic Reynolds presented an operatic adaptation at Covent Garden in 1820 incorporating the masque from The Tempest as well as extracts from Shakespeare's sonnets and his narrative poem Venus and Adonis. At the same time, "breeches" roles such as Viola, in which women pretended to be men, with their transgressive potential for assuming figure-revealing masculine attire, became extremely popular. The American actress Charlotte Cushman, best known for her performance as Romeo to her sister's Juliet, played Viola in New York with her sister Susan as Olivia. The production transferred to London's Haymarket Theatre in 1846. Samuel Phelps' productions at Sadler's Wells in 1847 and 1858 transformed Malvolio curiously into a Spanish Golden Age hidalgo, one nobly born but poor (Don Quixote is the most famous literary example of the type).
Charles Kean presented a typically lavish pictorial staging with his wife, Ellen Tree, as Viola in 1850. Five years later Kate Terry starred in Alfred Wigan's production at the St. James' Theatre in which, with some rearrangement of the text, she played both Viola and Sebastian. Kean's spectacular set was matched by Henry Irving's in 1884:
The Lyceum Illyria is a land where ornate palaces with their cool balconies and colonnades and their mazy arabesque traceries, look forth among groves of palms, and plantains, and orange trees, and cedars, over halcyon seas dotted with birdlike feluccas and high-prowed fishing boats.8
While Ellen Terry was praised for her Viola, critics were divided by Irving's Malvolio. A number objected to his mannered delivery. "When an absence of humorous expression is required to give a speech its full comic effect, Mr Irving's restless eyebrows and obliquely twinkling eyes do him a disservice." The production's "tone of serious tragedy," which culminated in his collapsing into "a nerveless state of prostrate dejection ... stretched on the straw of a dungeon worthy of Fidelio," was felt to unbalance the play: "There can be no doubt that the straw which clung to Mr Irving's dress from the mad-house scene was the last straw which broke the patience of a certain section of the first night audience."9
Augustin Daly's 1893 production, which featured a violent storm as well as a moonlit rose garden, cut and rearranged the text drastically. It was generally well received, though, both in New York and London when it transferred the following year. In the words of the critic William Archer, it had "the one supreme merit which, in a Shakespearean revival, covers a multitude of sins--it really 'revives' the play, makes it live again."10 For George Bernard Shaw, Ada Rehan's Viola was the production's only redeeming feature: "the moment she strikes up the true Shakespearian music, and feels her way to her part altogether by her sense of that music, the play returns to life and all the magic is there."11 Shaw deplored the liberties Daly had taken with the text, though, which included cutting the "dark-house" scene in Act 4 when Malvolio is imprisoned and taunted with madness.
Surprisingly, William Poel also cut this scene in his experimental production at the Middle Temple in 1897 in the (reconstructed) hall where Manningham had seen the Chamberlain's Men perform it. Keen to gauge its possibilities as a playing space, Poel's Elizabethan Stage Society employed original staging practices as far as possible. Herbert Beerbohm Tree cut the same scene in his production at the Haymarket in 1901. George Odell described it as
the most extraordinary single setting I have ever beheld. It was the garden of Olivia, extending terrace by terrace to the extreme back of the stage, with very real grass, real fountains, paths and descending steps. I never saw anything approaching it for beauty and vraisemblance.12
Unfortunately the set's complexity made it impossible to strike so that a number of completely inappropriate scenes had to be played on it. Tree himself played Malvolio, emphasizing comedy rather than pathos as the "peacock-like" steward was always followed by "four smaller Malvolios in the production who aped the large one in dress and deportment."13
Essentially an ensemble piece with the lines distributed more-or-less evenly across the major roles, twentieth-century productions generally eschewed the earlier practice of building up a star part. Harley Granville-Barker's "legendary"14 1912 production at the Savoy Theatre, influenced by the ideas and practices of Poel, has proved of lasting significance in thinking about the play. Michael Billington records how
Norman Wilkinson's black-and-silver setting, evoking a half-Italianised Elizabethan court, combined beauty with intimacy: there was a formal garden with a great staircase right and left, with drop curtains and a small inner tapestry set for the carousal. The verse was spoken with lightness, speed, and dexterity ... above all, Granville-Barker got rid of all the false accretions of stage tradition and sought for the essential truth of character.15
Lillah McCarthy's Viola was praised as was Arthur Whitby's Sir Toby. Henry Ainley played Malvolio as a "Puritan prig," while one of the chief innovations was the casting of the middle-aged Hayden Coffin
as Feste, whom Barker saw as "not a young man," adding: "There runs through all he says and does that vein of irony through which we may so often mark one of life's self-acknowledged failures."16
Barker himself admired the French-language version by Jacques
1. Harley Granville-Barker production, Savoy Theatre, 1912, the "black and silver setting evoking a half Italianised Elizabethan court," depicting Henry Ainley as Malvolio, Arthur Whitby as Sir Toby, Leah Bateman Hunter as Maria, Hayden Coffin as Feste, and Leon Quartermaine as Sir Andrew.
Copeau first staged in 1914 at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier. He reviewed the 1921 revival favorably, noting with approval the "precision, variety, clarity and, above all, passion" of the actors' diction.17 There were several revivals in the 1930s and 1940s. Edith Evans played Viola in Harcourt Williams' 1932 production at the Old Vic. Five years later, again at the Old Vic, Tyrone Guthrie directed Laurence Olivier as Sir Toby, Alec Guinness as Sir Andrew, and Marius Goring as Feste, with Jessica Tandy playing both Viola and Sebastian. Jacques Copeau's nephew, Michel Saint-Denis, staged the play at the Phoenix in 1938 with Peggy Ashcroft as a remarkable Viola, a production that was subsequently filmed for the BBC. In Margaret Webster's 1940-41 Theatre Guild production at New York's St. James' Theater the Jacobean masque provided inspiration for set and costumes. Helen Hayes' Viola was warmly praised, although opinions were divided about Maurice Evans' Malvolio, played as "a Cockney, a head butler raised to sublimation."18
Hugh Hunt's 1950 Old Vic revival owed much to the Italian commedia dell'arte--both "arty and hearty": "Its best bits are the hearty bits, centred around a fine scarlet-faced, broad-bottomed, big-bellied, rasping Roger Livesey as Sir Toby. Its worst bits are the arty framework which the producer has thought fit to provide."19 Peggy Ashcroft playing Viola was singled out for praise:
It is long since I have seen a Viola so fitted to the play. Peggy Ashcroft is never brisk or pert, never self-consciously disguised ... She is very quiet, very loyal. She does not juggle with words ... this Viola realises what love can be--she is not toying with it--and the "willow cabin" speech comes from her with an absolute sincerity, with no kind of elaborate preparation ... And this is not Peggy Ashcroft's finest moment: that comes at the very end, when Viola, her lost brother before her, answers his question, "What countryman? What name? What parentage?" with the barely-breathed "Of Messaline." Now the play is played. Viola has her reward at last in the strange bittersweet Illyrian world. The Old Vic can be happy indeed to have had such a performance as this at its opening.20
Sir John Gielgud's production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1955 with Laurence Olivier as Malvolio, Vivien Leigh as Viola, Paul Daneman as Feste, Maxine Audley as Olivia, and Richard Burton as Sir Toby had been eagerly anticipated. Despite the beauty of the set and Elizabethan costumes and its star cast, Gielgud himself acknowledged that "Somehow the production did not work."21 The critic Peter Fleming suggested: "There is a certain lack of heart about this elegant and well-paced production": Vivien Leigh's Viola, though "trim, pretty, poised and resourceful," had a quality of "non-involvement." Likewise, Olivier's "brilliant and deeply-considered study of Malvolio" possessed some "inner quality of reserve or detachment."22 Billington concluded that "If one had to sum up his performance in a word it would be 'camp.' "23
Tyrone Guthrie's production at the Stratford Festival Ontario in 1957 was more successful in integrating the play's diverse elements. Siobhan McKenna's Viola won especial praise:
With economical grace and shining eye she creates Illyria out of bare boards as divinely as if she had a vision of Heaven ... With the security of Miss McKenna's power, Dr. Guthrie feels free to play his clowns as less silly than is the lamentable tradition. Sir Toby, Maria and Sir Andrew are well-defined characters.24
Against these,
Feste became a sad, ageing fool full of the pathos of his position where he is retained not for his wit but for his length of service. His melancholy, honestly come by, thus makes Malvolio's even more priggish, rendering his gulling and final turning-off not only poignant, which it always is, but even credible which it seldom is.25
Critics were initially confused by Peter Hall's 1958 production at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, now regarded as a classic of its time. John Wain saw it as "a perfect example of how a Shakespeare play can be ripped apart by the twin steel claws of naturalism and gimmickry,"26 while Alan Brien, having criticized every aspect of the production, concluded: "Mr Hall is wrong and I am right. And yet how I enjoyed every moment of his wrongness."27 Peter Jackson offered a more positive assessment of its innovative qualities:
What a rib-tickling, refreshing Twelfth Night Peter Hall has conjured up ... a production that is smooth and gay and brimming with new ways to play old tricks. Dorothy Tutin's golden Viola is wonderfully boyish, breathless and bewildered and always completely audible. She is alive, and to be alive in a cast like this means working double overtime. To force Olivia to play for laughs while surrounded on all sides by comedians with far better lines does not give the actress a fighting chance, but Geraldine McEwan, with her piping voice and plaintive little gestures, draws such sympathy from the audience that the approach is almost justified.28
Designed by the painter Lila de Nobili and set in the Caroline court pre-civil war, the production was described by the critic Robert Speaight as "a rich symphony in russet."29 It was revived two years later for the Royal Shakespeare Company with a substantially revised cast (discussed in detail below, along with other RSC productions).
One of the most successful non-RSC productions of the late twentieth century was at Stratford, Ontario, in 1975, directed by David Jones, with Kathleen Widdoes as Viola and Brian Bedford as a puritanical Malvolio. For his 1980 production at the Circle Repertory Theatre, New York, David Mamet allowed the actors to choose their own costumes in accordance with their conception of their character. This resulted in a medley of costumes which divided critics, many of whom thought it an "irresponsible gimmick," while others argued that it revealed "a fine intuition into the play's heart."30 If critics were divided about costumes and several individual performances, they were unanimous in their praise for Lindsay Crouse's Viola.
In 1987 Kenneth Branagh directed the Renaissance Theatre Company's production at the Riverside Studios. It was set in a wintry landscape with a Christmas tree and a snowy cemetery. Richard Briers' "first-rate" Malvolio was "nicely balanced by Anton Lesser's shaggy-locked Feste, Frances Barber's clear-spoken Viola, and Caroline Langrishe's Olivia."31 The production was later re-created for television. In the same year Declan Donnellan's production for Cheek by Jowl played at the Donmar Warehouse after a lengthy provincial tour. It was a controversial and irreverent production, with the drunken revelers blasting out the Sinatra classic "My Way." Michael Ratcliffe in the Observer thought it "a Twelfth Night for those who had never seen the play before and those who thought they never wanted to see it again," whereas Peter Kemp in the Independent argued that "Self-indulgence--mocked in Twelfth Night--is pandered to in this production."32
Tim Supple's 1998 production at the Young Vic contrived to be both "visually simple, its costumes vaguely suggesting an Eastern exoticism, and aurally rich, the alien beauty of its Eastern melodies and instruments creating an Illyria of otherness and wonder."33 For his final season in 2002-03 at the Donmar Warehouse, Sam Mendes staged the play in repertory with Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. With Simon Russell Beale as Malvolio, Emily Watson as Viola, and David Bradley as Aguecheek, it was "a production that found multiple dimensions of Twelfth Night with highly suggestive staging and music and a minimum of detail."34
Twelfth Night has been set everywhere and nowhere: in 2000 Shakespeare and Company set it "against fragments of a deteriorating seaside carnival"; in the same year the Theatre at Monmouth's production was set in "a 1920s seaside resort," while the Alabama Shakespeare Festival's production of that year created a "1930s cabaret mood." On the other hand, companies such as the "touring five-person troupe Acto
rs From the London Stage, thrive on early modern practices such as open spaces and doubling, tripling, and quadrupling roles. In the 1994 performance ... at the Clemson Shakespeare Festival, Geoffrey Church played Orsino, Feste, and Fabian."35 Similarly, Shenandoah Shakespeare's productions in 1995 and 2000-01 successfully experimented with cross-gender cross-casting, with David McCallum playing both Maria and Sebastian. The 2002 all-male production at Shakespeare's Globe theater in London played with the sexual ambiguity of the casting, causing the audience to gasp as Orsino kissed Cesario. Mark Rylance found a great deal of unsuspected comedy in the part of Olivia, and Paul Chahidi was a wonderfully busy Maria. The production was especially successful when played in the hall of the Middle Temple, where Manningham had seen the original version exactly four hundred years before.
The play has continued in recent years to thrive onstage despite Michael Billington's contention that while "Twelfth Night may be Shakespeare's most perfect comedy, it is also one of the hardest to bring off in the theater because of its sheer kaleidoscopic range of moods."36 The illusionist productions of the nineteenth century are a thing of the past, their place taken by film with all its potential for realism. There were a number of silent screen versions, including Charles Kent's for Vitagraph in 1910, which, despite lasting for only twelve minutes, employs relatively sophisticated cinematographic techniques.37 In 1955 Yakov Fried produced a Russian-language version in black and white which critics have seen as a response to the death of Stalin in its "fresh air of political renewal" which "opens up Shakespeare's play into a world of expansive great houses and the rich, open landscape of faraway mountains, open fields, and the promise of unlimited vistas or reverberate hills."38
Twelfth Night Page 12