Twelfth Night
Book Description
Preface TWELFTH NIGHT; needs be gone; from theB ook of A yres, by Robert Jones, first published in 1601, the date of composition may with some certainty be assigned to 1601-2. Title of the Play. According to HalH well-P hiU ipps, Twelfth Night was one of four plays acted byS hakespeare sC ompany, theL ord Chamberlain sservants, before the Court at Whitehall during the Christmas of 1601-2: possibly...
MorePreface TWELFTH NIGHT; needs be gone; from theB ook of A yres, by Robert Jones, first published in 1601, the date of composition may with some certainty be assigned to 1601-2. Title of the Play. According to HalH well-P hiU ipps, Twelfth Night was one of four plays acted byS hakespeare sC ompany, theL ord Chamberlain sservants, before the Court at Whitehall during the Christmas of 1601-2: possibly it owed its name to the circumstance that it was first acted as the Twelfth-N ight performance on that occasion. Others hold that the name of the play was suggested by its embodiment of the spirit of the Twelfth-N ight sports and revels a time devoted to festivity and merriment. I ts second name, Or What You Will was perhaps given in something of the same spirit as As You Like It ;it probably implies that the first title has no very special meaning. It has been suggested that the name expresses Shakespeare sindifference to his own production that it was a sort of farewell to Comedy; in his subsequent plays the tragic element was to predominate. This far-fetched subtle view of the matter has certainly little to commend it. The Sources of the Plot, (i.) There are at least two Italian plays called Gl I nganni (T he Cheats), to which Manningham may have referred in his entry as containing incidents resembling those ofT zvelfth Night; one of these plays, by Nicolo Secchi, was printed in 1562; another by Curzio Gonzalo, was first published in 1592. In the latter play the sister, who dresses as a man, and is mistaken for her brother, gives herself the name of Cesare, and it seems likely that we have here the source of Shakespeare sC esario. (ii.) A third play, however, entitled Gl I ngannati (V enice, 1537), translated by Peacock in 1862, bears a much stronger resemblance toT zvelfth Night; in its poetical induction, Sacrificio, oc Marston took the name What Yoii Will for
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)
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