One of William Shakespeare’s most popular and brilliant comedies, ‘Twelfth Night’ features a gender-bending/mistaken identity/double-marriage-at-the-end plot that has enshrined this play as a favorite among audiences and critics alike.
A terrible shipwreck occurs off the coast of the kingdom of Illyria and a young girl – Viola – is plucked from the ocean by a group of sailors and set on shore alone, believing her twin brother Sebastian to have been lost at sea. For her own protection, she disguises herself as a boy and goes to work as a page for Duke Orsino, who is desperately in love with the Countess Olivia. Olivia, for her part, is in mourning for her own dead brother and has sworn off romance of any kind for seven years, much to Orsino’s frustration.
When Orsino sends Viola (now dubbed ‘Cesario’) to woo Olivia on his behalf, the plan backfires, as Olivia becomes smitten with Viola’s alter-ego instead. And when Sebastian (Viola’s identical twin) shows up in Illlyria and starts to be mistaken for Cesario…the situation soon spins delightfully out of control.
Featuring some of Shakespeare’s most beloved characters (including Olivia’s prudish manservant Malvolio and the mischievous prankster Sir Toby Belch), ‘Twelfth Night’ is presented here in its original and unabridged format.
About the author
William Shakespeare is generally acknowledged as the greatest dramatist in the history of English literature. Also a poet and actor, Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, where he received an education at the local grammar school, but whether he attended any educational institution subsequent to his early tutelage is unknown. By eighteen, Shakespeare was married – to an already-pregnant Anne Hathaway – and the couple would go on to have three children, Susanna and the twins Hamnet and Judith. (Hamnet died at 11 years old.) Shakespeare moved to London soon after the birth of the twins and began publishing poems (‘Venus and Adonis’ (1593) and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’ (1594)) and joined the Lord Chamberlain’s Men as an actor and playwright. Shakespeare stayed with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men throughout his career, producing some of his finest work – ‘King Lear, ‘ ‘Macbeth’ and ‘The Tempest’ among them – after the company fell under the patronage of King James I and became The King’s Men. During his career, Shakespeare penned 38 plays, two narrative poems and over 150 sonnets and enjoyed considerable financial success, eventually buying New Place, one of the largest homes in Stratford. Following his death in 1616 at the age of 52, thirty-six of his plays were collected and published as the First Folio and his entire canon – including his extant plays, sonnets and poems – were published as The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s plays are the most produced dramatic works in existence and they have been translated and adapted into countless stage, screen and television productions over the years. Entire theatres are devoted to producing his works and his writings are studied and analyzed in literature classes around the world.
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