Twelfth Night - Door Shakespeare

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Our thirtieth anniversary season features Twelfth Night and Great Expectations—two tales of transformation, redemption, and the long, winding river toward truth and belonging. In Twelfth Night, mistaken identity and misplaced affection give way to laughter, love, and revelation. In Gale Childs Daly’s adaptation of Great Expectations, Dickens’s characters navigate heartbreak and hope in a harsh and wondrous world.

Though penned centuries apart, these stories share an essential thread: a belief in transformation, in second chances, and in the mysterious ways life can surprise us.

Twelfth Night Synopsis

Following the death of their father, twins Sebastian and Viola are shipwrecked off the coast of Illyria. Finding herself alone in a new country and fearing that her brother has died, Viola disguises herself as a boy named Cesario and enters the service of Duke Orsino. Orsino is unsuccessfully courting the Countess Olivia who has abjured the sight of men while she grieves the recent deaths of her own father and brother. Olivia is also being courted by the wealthy Sir Andrew Aguecheek at the encouragement of Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby Belch. Olivia’s servant Maria and Feste the Fool seek to comfort Olivia but eventually unite with Sir Toby and Sir Andrew to play a trick on Olivia’s officious housekeeper Malvolio. Viola’s disguise allows her to move freely through Illyria, but unexpected complications arise when Orsino and Olivia each develop romantic feelings for Cesario the page boy. Overlapping love triangles and household rivalries grow increasingly confused when Viola’s twin brother Sebastian—completely unaware that Viola also survived and disguised herself—arrives in Illyria.

Twelfth Night

Scott McKenna Campbell’s Director’s Notes

A decade ago, I heard an actor refer to Twelfth Night as “a love story with a river of sadness flowing beneath it.” I agree with this appraisal: the play is undergirded by sadness and resolved by love, but neither the sorrow nor the love are as simple as audiences may expect.

Audiences meet the play in the wake of grief. Like Viola and Sebastian’s salvation from a literal shipwreck, the inhabitants of Illyria seek solid ground after unsettling losses. Olivia’s father—the old Count—has died, and her brother—his successor—has also passed. We see the Illyrians floundering in the wake of tragedy: Olivia abjures the sight of men, Sir Toby seeks solace in inebriation, Feste the Fool has disappeared from the court. Faced with grief, each of these figures turn inward in search of meaning, consolation, and comfort.

I imagine Illyria at the play’s beginning as a winter place overseen by grey clouds that devour light and invite silence. While the world of the play has been wracked by storms and catastrophe before the curtain opens, the play itself begins with a feeling of stillness, or stasis, as characters grasp for pathways through griefs that predate the play’s first scenes.

It is into this cold, still, world that Shakespeare introduces many of his most vibrant characters. Viola arrives on shore and catches both Olivia and Orsino’s romantic attention by bringing a capacity for connection and discovery unseen in their other suitors. Sebastian washes up in Illyria with an impetuousness and earnestness that shocks and enervates those around him. Feste the Fool returns from being “so long away” to bring the Illyrians songs and wit that hold a mirror up to both their foibles and their unprocessed griefs.

With each of these characters’ arrivals and subsequent interactions, a contagious ray of sun breaks through the chilling grief that opens the play; a warm breeze encourages characters to remember that springtime always follows winter. It is in these interactions with outsiders that the residents of Illyria find love: whether romantic love with partners, familial love with friends and relations, or—for many—the love for a life well-lived that they had lost before the play began. As poet Kahlil Gibran writes in his poem On Joy and Sorrow, “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” Twelfth Night is a journey towards love made richer by the sadness that its characters navigate and overcome.

Thank you for joining us on this journey.

Scott McKenna Campbell

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A BIOGRAPHY

Since William Shakespeare lived more than 400 years ago, and many records from that time are lost or never existed in the first place, we don’t know everything about his life.

For example, we know that he was baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, 100 miles northwest of London, on April 26, 1564. But we don’t know his exact birthdate, which must have been a few days earlier.

We know that Shakespeare’s life revolved around two locations: Stratford and London. He grew up, had a family, and bought property in Stratford, but he worked in London, the center of English theater. As an actor, a playwright, and a partner in a leading acting company, he became both prosperous and well-known. Even without knowing everything about his life, fans of Shakespeare have imagined and reimagined him according to their own tastes.

Birth and Childhood

William Shakespeare was probably born on about April 23, 1564, the date that is traditionally given for his birth. He was John and Mary Shakespeare’s oldest surviving child; their first two children, both girls, did not live beyond infancy. Growing up as the big brother of the family, William had three younger brothers, Gilbert, Richard, and Edmund, and two younger sisters: Anne, who died at seven, and Joan.

Their father, John Shakespeare, was a leatherworker who specialized in the soft white leather used for gloves and similar items. A prosperous businessman, he married Mary Arden, of the prominent Arden family. John rose through local offices in Stratford, becoming an alderman

and eventually, when William was five, the town bailiff—much like a mayor. Not long after that, however, John Shakespeare stepped back from public life. We don’t know why.

Shakespeare, as the son of a leading Stratford citizen, almost certainly attended Stratford’s grammar school. Like all such schools, its curriculum consisted of an intense emphasis on the Latin classics, including memorization, writing, and acting in classic Latin plays. Shakespeare most likely attended until about age 15.

Marriage and Children

A few years after he left school, in late 1582, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway. She was already expecting their first-born child, Susanna, which was a fairly common situation at the time. When they married, Anne was 26 and William was 18. Anne grew up just outside Stratford in the village of Shottery. After marrying, she spent the rest of her life in Stratford.

In early 1585, the couple had twins, Judith and Hamnet, completing the family. In the years ahead, Anne and the children lived in Stratford while Shakespeare worked in London, although we don’t know when he moved there. Some later observers have suggested that this separation, and the couple’s relatively few children, were signs of a strained marriage, but we do not know that either. Someone pursuing a theater career had no choice but to work in London, and many branches of the Shakespeares had small families.

Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, died in 1596 at the age of 11. His older daughter Susanna later married a well-to-do Stratford doctor, John Hall. Their daughter Elizabeth, Shakespeare’s first grandchild, was born in 1608. In 1616, just months before his death, Shakespeare’s daughter Judith married Thomas Quiney, a Stratford vintner. The family subsequently died out, leaving no direct descendants of Shakespeare.

London Theater

For several years after Judith and Hamnet’s arrival in 1585, nothing is known for certain of Shakespeare’s activities, such as how he earned a living, when he moved from Stratford, or how he got his start in the theater.

Following this gap in the record, the first definite mention of Shakespeare is in 1592 as an established London actor and playwright, mocked by a contemporary as a “Shake-scene.” The same writer alludes to one of Shakespeare’s earliest history plays, Henry VI, Part 3, which must already have been performed.

The next year, in 1593, Shakespeare published a long poem, Venus and Adonis. The first quarto editions of his early plays appeared in 1594. For more than two decades, Shakespeare had multiple roles in the London theater as an actor, playwright, and, in time, a business partner in a major acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (renamed the King’s Men in 1603). Over the years, he became steadily more famous in the London theater world. His name, which was not even listed on the first quartos of his plays, became a regular feature—clearly a selling point—on later title pages.

Final Years

Shakespeare prospered financially from his partnership in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men), as well as from his writing and acting. He invested much of his wealth in real-estate purchases in Stratford and bought the second-largest house in town, New Place, in 1597.

Among the last plays that Shakespeare worked on was The Two Noble Kinsmen, which he wrote with a frequent collaborator, John Fletcher, most likely in 1613. He died on April 23, 1616—the traditional date of his birthday, though his precise birthdate is unknown. We also do not know the cause of his death. His brother-in-law had died a week earlier, which could imply infectious disease, but Shakespeare’s health may have had a longer decline.

From the Folger Shakespeare Library, www.folger.edu

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