Near the end of the film Shakespeare in Love, Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) suggests to William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) that his next play (after Romeo and Juliet) be a comedy. she suggests a title: “Twelfth Night”.
What’s the significance of this phrase? It doesn’t appear anywhere in the play, though there is an interrupted song containing the line “On the twelfth day of December”.
On the Twelfth Night (either before or after Christmas I don’t remember) it’s Topsy Turvy Day. Servants or masters, men dress as women, etc etc. Everything is backwards and up, Topsy Turvy.
As was everything in the play.
Incidently, I’m reading that play for my Sr Exam. The exam I need to take for my BA in English. I cannot stand this play. Why couldn’t they have assigned a good tragedy? It’s all I can do to read/watch it a second time and my exam is on Friday. I’m very nervous.
Err, everything was backwards and upside down.
Its the Illuminat…
[muffled screams]
As for the significance of the twelfth night after Christmas in the first place, there is a tradition that it was on the twelfth day (or night) after the birth of Jesus that the Magi arrived bearing their gifts. Some people still celebrate January 6 as “Little Christmas.”
Although pepperlandgirl and Biffy are correct about the associations of Twelfth Night as a festival, it’s possible as well that the reference in the title is specific as well as thematic; some scholars speculate that the play’s first performance was part of a Twelfth Night celebration, possibly at the Inns of Court. (This is the tack Shakespeare in Love takes, too, as I recall, although the action of the film is set some years before Twelfth Night was probably written, so Shakespeare must have sat on the play for a while. ;))
In Twelfth Night, the character Viola is washed ashore in a strange land.
Then you see the Gwyneth Paltrow’s character Viola going to the new world.
Twelfth Night was the last day of the Christmas season: January 6. As you correctly note, this was traditionally a time for Saturnalian role-reversals, as mirrored in the play.
Zebra, the play’s ending with Viola entering the New World reflects the beginning of the play, but also alludes to the shipwreck in The Tempest, with Ferdinand and company stranded on Prospero’s island - except, of course, with the sex roles reversed.
*The Tempest * itself was partially based on a real shipwreck in 1610, when the Sea-Adventure, bound for Virginia, was wrecked in a storm and ended up in Bermuda: repairs effected, it eventually arrived with its cargo of colonists in Jamestown. As a fitting end to the film, *The Tempest * was Shakespeare’s last solely authored play {although he probably later collaborated with the Jacobean playwright John Fletcher on All Is True and The Two Noble Kinsmen}.
And Fletcher in the film was the gore-hungry urchin who “liked the part where she stabbed herself. That were alright.” It all starts to come together…
Disregard that last paragraph: it was John Webster, not John Fletcher, who was the sanguinary urchin, later responsible for such sanguinary plays as The Duchess Of Malfi. I always get those bloody two mixed up.
Focus on Andrew Aguecheek if you are studying this play. There be comic genius there.
Where is stonebow when you need him/her? Oh for something to hit him in the eye with!
Where’s Aguecheek when you need him? “I was adored once” is one of the most heart-breaking lines in all of literature, epecially when you consider the character who utters it. " A plague o’ these pickle herring!
Thanks for the responses. It’s nice to hear about a quaint English tradition that doesn’t specifically involve the symbolic decapitation of someone.
Some info from a Twelfth Night FAQ page.
More generally, Twelfth Night was, according to folk legend at least, when the “spirits of revelry” came out and, well, reveled. And to a certain extent you have spirits of revelry in the play: Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste.
It’s not a great play to read. Performed well, though, I think it’s hilarious and his funniest play from start to finish.
You’re putting us on, right? How can you not love Twelfth Night? Maybe say everything out loud. Also, get the Trevor Nunn production of several years ago with Helena Bonham Carter and Ben Kingsley.
–Cliffy