Twelfth Night

'If music be the food of love, play on.' Shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria and believing her twin brother Sebastian drowned, Viola disguises herself as a young man, Cesario, and enters the service of Duke Orsino. She falls in love with him; he sends her to court the Countess Olivia for him; and Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Below stairs, Olivia's riotous uncle Sir Toby Belch, the foolish Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the clever maid Maria trick the pompous steward Malvolio with a forged love letter into appearing in yellow stockings, cross-gartered, until Sebastian turns up alive and everyone is mistaken for someone else.

The play takes its name from the last night of the Christmas festivities, a time of disguise and misrule, and was performed in 1602 at the Middle Temple in London. It mixes laughter with melancholy, especially in the songs of the clown Feste. The text here is that of the First Folio of 1623. For another comedy of lost twins, try The Comedy of Errors.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616), born in Stratford-upon-Avon, actor, playwright and shareholder of a London company, wrote about thirty-seven plays and 154 sonnets.

The tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear, and comedies such as A Midsummer Night's Dream, are here in full, with hundreds of editions and studies from HathiTrust.