I wish I could've seen what performances of this play were like in Shakespeare's time. Since women couldn't be on stage, men had to play the women's roles, which means that the guy playing Viola had to also dress up as a man while acting like a woman.
You have to wonder if the audience ever really knew what was going on. I'll bet you anything you like that some form of the following conversation took place in the Globe Theater at one point:
GROUNDLING 1: Wait, wasn't that guy playing a girl? Why' More...

A few years ago I read a review of some film that had come out and I was sure I would never see – read the review almost carelessly while flicking through the arts section of the paper on a Saturday morning, no, I must have been clicking over The Age Home Page. The woman who wrote the review commented that whatever the film was had been based on Twelfth Night – which she considered that most ridiculous of Shakespeare’s plays – she really could not see how anyone could be bothered to reproduce th More...

The only reason this gets four and not five stars is that we're rating on the scale of Shakespeare to Shakespeare, and I think that there is some awkwardness in this one in terms of the conclusion; where everyone goes and how they get to it. There are also some very thin plot devices that annoy me.

However, that being said, I love this play. I played Mariah in it in high school, and it was one of the most fun things I've been in. It can be played for laughs, or for the dark side. The movie versio More...

Twelfth Night, a Romantic Comedy that was written by the late William Shakespeare has to be one of his best works. This romantic Comedy deals and relates to real life events, as people in life hides there identities so that others won't know there true inner self. For example, Viola played a character in the name of Cesario in Twelfth Night. She had true feelings for one Orsino but couldn't express her feelings because of her disguise being a man. Her disguise instead was to help Olivia hook up More...

Here Shakespeare borrows as so often in his comedies, from Plautus for the overarching plot--the separated siblings, the twinning (recall his Errors, and the Menaechmi), the arrival from sea. But he adds so much as to make it unrecognizable as a Roman comedy. He adds an attractive drunk, Sir Toby, who fleeces a silly aristocrat who--perhaps alone in literature-- knows himself to be silly. He adds, for instance, a parody of Renaissance psychiatry (well, more theology, but since "psyche" in Greek More...

TWELFTH NIGHT OR WHAT YOU WILL
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Written round about the year 1601,Twelfth Night is the Twelfth Night Christmas, i.e., january 6th.

In the romantic atmosphere of Twelfth Night, we feel as if we were transported to a world of make-believe and far away from the accepted standards of ordinary life. The time of the action of Twelfth Night is 3 days.The main-plot starts with the arrival of the shipwrecked brother and sister, Sebastian and Viola,on the shores of Illyria. Neither o More...

The book Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare was an interesting book. It was a very funny play that will show everyone that love is crazy. I enjoyed reading this play because not only was all of the characters confused in the play they were in love. Twelfth Night being the night of fun and disguses makes this book interesting. This is beacause Shakespeare made love seem hard to get. When in reality love is really hard to get. Malvolio was a great character because people tend to be like him. Ev More...

So far this book is starting to get very interesting and somewhat funny. This play is good and relating to everyday life. I feel that this play is very similar to high school because of the the way people act in the book and towards others and its the same way in school. I really like the part when Olivia showed Viola/ Cesario her true feelings and he rejected her and she acted like didn't like him. Even though the book ended a little strange, it was still a great book and i enjoyed it a lot. I More...

I already watched the movie She's the Man (which for those of you that don't know is a hilarious movie based on Twelfth Night), so the storyline was not new to me. I already had the basics of what was going on and what would happen. So I guess you could say that I treated this play like a job that needed to be finished. That coupled with the fact that this genre wasn't what I usually go for (a.k.a young adult or just fantasy in general) and you get an extremely bored me flipping through the page More...

Twelfth Night is a very good book. Shakespeare is a very talented man and has shown this greatly through this play. It has that people rarely see the things right in front of their eyes, and often this may be the most important thing. It showed me that love can come in many diffrent forms, and you should always expect the unexpected, their are people out their that will love you just for you and not for the material things you have and or the way you appear. It was a great comedy as well and was More...

There's a little too much going on here. The plot drivers are a gender-bending love triangle (which conveniently resolves into a square by virtue of one of the triangle vertices having a fraternal twin brother whom she looks so much like that she's confused for him when she wears men's clothing) and a couple of schoolyard-quality pranksters stirring crap up with stuff like a fake love letter and "hey, he wants to fight you" kinds of rumors. And the characters are pushed into those circumstances More...

It's the first time I've read Twelfth Night and I'm really sure I know the names of the characters in it. And then I discovered I was right, SHE'S THE MAN.

I liked it. Although of course, I like the recent equivalent better, because I love Amanda Bynes or loved Amanda Bynes. I don't know where she is right now.

The time I read the names VIOLA, DUKE ORSINO, and OLIVIA, I knew right then and there where I heard those names from.

It's really interesting how they were portrayed in the original, althoug More...

I remember these peppered irritations of tragedy in Shakespeare’s comedies. We laugh at the tragically misunderstood or deceived characters and the seemingly ill-fated events turning against their hopes. Twelfth Night exemplifies Shakespearean comedy in the sense that the audience laughs at the silly misconceptions and ridiculous manipulations perpetrated in the play. Within Twelfth Night we have other common Shakespearean elements such as the fool, gender disguise and complicated love triangles More...

As I read Twelfth Night I had the impression that this must surely be one of Shakespeare's earlier works because it seemed like a model play that his other comedies would be based on. All the familiar Shakespeare themes and plot devices can be found and it seems kind of a basic structure that would serve as blueprint for his more elaborate and interesting comedies. When I found out it was written in the latter half of his career it made me feel that the play was a bit of a money grab on the bard More...

So far Twelfth Night is my favorite play from William Shakespeare. The reason for that is because I enjoy reading about romance , and I love laughing and this book has both comedy and romance. There was a ton of interesting characters in this play , and they all seemed to have a disguise whether it was a physical , or an internal disguise. For example Feste the " fool" is not the average fool ,hes actually a whity fool and he knows more than an average fool. Viola, who is the protagonist of the More...

I have to admit Twelfth Night was actually an enjoyable play to read. I loved how the ending played out. The ending was something no one ever would have expected (atleast I didnt). viola was a character in particular who caught my attention. She reminded me of myself. Not that I disguise myself and pretend to be a guy, but the fact that she hides her true emotions and has to deal day by day with having to please others, reminds me of myself. Viola is a character who is in love with her master, y More...

Twelfth night is a very funny and interesting book. Shakespeare sets his characters to be a symbol as "real life". Malvolio is a character that shakespeare characterizes as a puritan. A puritan was a person that was always stuck up and did not have fun. Sir Toby is Olivia's cousin. Olivia is the most beautiful women in Illyria. The duke Orsino thinks he is in love with Olivia. Olivia does not like him but likes Cesario, Orsion's servant. Cesario is real a women disguised as a man. Cesario likes More...

This book was very interesting. Viola's character transforms from a women to a man by pretending to be her twin brother. She falls for the Duke Orsino , who believes she is a man, and things go down hill from there. I find it interesting that Shakespeare covered cross dressing and bisexual concepts in his time. I thought that it was interesting to see him incorporate those in a funny way. I thought the theme Shakespeare was trying to cover was People disguise who they really are to hide their tr More...

Even though the play is cliche, I still enjoyed reading it. The context was feasible to read and comprehend. In contrast, the last Act was confusing and hard to understand what was happening exactly because there was a lot of things going on with the characters. Through the play, I found it amusing how the characters disguise themselves and hide their true feelings and motives. One character is Viola who disguises herself as Cesario and that impedes her from being with Orsino and it also allows More...

Overall, Twelfth Night was a well written play that was created with a very interesting theme. Shakespeare's plays are challenging to understand, but once I practiced the vocabulary I was able to comprehend the text. This play was confusing at first because all of the characters were in love with each other. There was a lot of misunderstandings and heart breaks when certain characters could not be with the other. For example, Olivia could not be with Cesario because in reality he was a girl. The More...

Twelfth Night is a play written by William Shakespeare, which is set in Illyria. This play has an abundance of characters with different personalities, some with personalities that do not fit their appearance. a lady named viola washes ashore Illyria and looks for a job. she comes across Orsino's court where she cross dresses as a man to get the job. Cesario, Violas disguise, fools everyone in thinking of him as a man including Olivia, a lady who lost her brother. as things escalate, the fool be More...

This is a fine play, and I certainly wouldn't denigrate the great WS, but it's not quite as good on paper as many other Shakespeare plays. Some read better than others, though of course they were all created for live performances on stage, not to be anthologized, studied, and certainly not tested over in school. Because so much of it is visual, especially the Malvolio subplot, it's not as lyrical as say As You Like It or Hamlet, and thus while it is good to read, it is sometimes a bit tedious, e More...

I have read this a couple of times. It is not one of my favorite Shakespearean comedies, but it certainly has its moments. I do like that Shakespeare's romantic leads are often clever and smart women who get to fence verbally with their romantic counterparts. Viola/Cesario has a lot of great lines in this play. She is clever and funny. Lots of good dramatic irony. And of course Maria is the smartest one out of the whole bunch of the lesser set of characters.

Not sure how Olivia could fall in lov More...

Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” was written around the year 1600. It would be fair to ask then what a play first performed over 400 years ago could possibly have to say of relevance to a new audience in the 21st Century.
Shakespeare’s comedies revel in issues which deal with mistaken identity, gender-bending, love, hate, trickery, slapstick comedy and general mental mayhem. In an age when we feel that life is fast, frenetic and complex and relational issues can be difficult, Shakespeare sets up exa More...

This has so many things that make my feet crumble; mistaken identities, mocking of innocent (although obnoxious) subjects, trickery and wrong assumptions.

I'm no good with comedies.

I love to watch them when I go to the theatre, but beside that? No. I get so stressed out about it. JUST GET TOGETHER ALREADY, TURKEY-COCKS (actual phrase from the play. I love you, William).

This play is funny, though, it has some excellent lines ("Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him" or "My purpose is, inde More...

This play has a special place in my affection. I first got to know it when I was I think 11 and it was the school play. I loved it then and I love it now. Someone wrote somewhere that the entire story is "enthused with the spirit of love". Love is presented mostly as a form of madness and sickness but a sickness which we welcome. There is a close parallel between the plague (analogies and references to the plague run through the play). Hundreds of years later Thomas Mann wrote "Death in Venice" More...

As far as Shakespeare plays go I found this to be an interesting read because I am always forced to study the tragedies rather than the comedies. My expectations were high for this play and i'm sad to say that I was let down. I felt that there could have been so much more done with this play. If Shakespeare can put so much depth into plays like Hamlet, than why couldn't he do the same for this. My opinion of this play would probably be altered were I to see it actually performed because much of More...

Twelfth Night by Williams Shakespeare was a great play to read. At times the play would get a bit confusing when it came to who was in love with whom, and what action was being done by which character because there was so much role playing with in the play. I feel as though Shakespeare did a great job with displaying the deceptive traits of every character and always finding a way to place another twist into the play,especially when Viola's secrete is discovered along with a surprise at the end More...