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Twelfth Night: Timeless Shakespeare
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Twelfth Night: Timeless Shakespeare
Unavailable
Twelfth Night: Timeless Shakespeare
Audiobook (abridged)1 hour

Twelfth Night: Timeless Shakespeare

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Can true love overcome all obstacles? That's a tough question- especially when several characters are pretending to be someone else! Luckily, all this mistaken identity proves to be as comical as it is confusing.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 1, 2011
ISBN9781612475370
Unavailable
Twelfth Night: Timeless Shakespeare
Author

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is the world's greatest ever playwright. Born in 1564, he split his time between Stratford-upon-Avon and London, where he worked as a playwright, poet and actor. In 1582 he married Anne Hathaway. Shakespeare died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two, leaving three children—Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. The rest is silence.

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Reviews for Twelfth Night

Rating: 4.066666666666666 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I reread the play as I'll be appearing in it this summer as Sir Toby Belch. Ah, what fun!

    Shakespeare fact: most directors these days cut Shakespeare's plays down to a reasonable two hours for performance. That will be the case for the production I'm in. I'll miss the double-talk conversations between Sir Toby and the Clown, and some of the "mistaken identity" humor involving male/female twins Sebastian and Viola. Although I can see why the director removed this stuff. In the former case, the invented references to phony experts like "Qeuebus" (God, would I have loved saying "Qeuebus"!) would have been indistinguishable from other archaic references, thereby causing confusion to the average theater goer. In the latter case, the humorous situations are often repetitive.


    Cutting Shakespeare is nothing new. David Garrick, an actor and director who was a friend of Samuel Johnson, used to do it routinely in the 18th century.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    What can one really say negative about Shakespeare? Any of his writings are simply a classic. However, this would not be my favourite of his works, it's simply a bit too ridiculous for my personal taste - I know Shakespeare's audience would have loved it. Boy loves Girl, another Girl (2) is stranded and decides to cross-dress to be near Boy, Boy sends Girl 2 to persuade Girl 1 of his love who in turn falls in love with cross-dressing Girl 2. Then Girl 2's twin brother shows up and causes chaos and in the end Boy 2 ends up with Girl 1 and Boy 1 with cross-dressing Girl 2, not questioning her cross-dressing for a second
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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 is both "soul" and "mind," that's fair) practiced on Shakespeare's only American. Instead of the common psyche ward question, "What does 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence' mean to you?" Feste as Reverend Psychiatrist asks, "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning the soul?" Remember, you can't get out of the psyche ward unless you answer right. Well, Malvolio DOES get it right, he hits it out of the park, but Feste keeps him in lockdown anyway. Why?Herein lies a tale. Malvolio is portrayed as stark raving mad simply because he wants to marry the boss's daughter--or really, the boss herself. A crazy idea. An American idea, one that would take a couple centuries and a Revolution to be accepted by anybody at all. Those rejects on the other side of the Atlantic.Yes, Malvolio is Shakespeare's only American (except possibly Othello?). And he is indeed, as he himself pleads at plays end, notoriously abused. He vows revenge on the whole pack--which we, as delighted playgoers, cannot support, though justice, and America, are on his side.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    BBC Radio 3 full cast production, first broadcast in 1998, and presented on 2 CDs. I bought this one because of the Blake's 7 interest, as Josette Simon plays Olivia. While it's an enjoyable performance, I would have been hard put to it to follow what was going on without previous knowledge of the plot from seeing the play on stage. Fortunately there's a good synopsis booklet included in the box.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this in preparation for going to see an upcoming production of this play put on by "Shakespeare in the Park" that's going to be playing June 1st through the 4th of this year in the Botanical Gardens. Considering the myriad summaries and expositions of this play, I won't recapitulate those here. What I will do, both for my personal use and for the remote possibility that someone else might find some use in them, is post my own thoughts and notes I took as I read it. Hopefully they'll serve as an aide memoire if I ever need one.ACT I: Overall themes: identity (masque?), rejection, and desire. It asks whether or not love is something real, or just another human artifice, much like the music that Count Orsino "feeds" on. Orsino's switch of affection from Olivia to Viola is a hint that he loves the idea of love more than one of the women themselves. He's a parody of the hopeless romantic. Viola's wish to be transformed into a eunuch is indicative of gender liminality - or at least this seems to be a common argument, even though it's readily known that men played all roles in Elizabethan and Jacobean theater (so I'm a little confused by the single-minded focus that much modern scholarship has put on gender in this play). Perhaps this gender ambiguity is a sort of defense mechanism to deal with the uncertainty inherent with being tossed on an unknown island. There has also been some focus on Orsino's shift of affection toward Viola (Cesario) from a platonic friendship to a more romantic one. (Could our more modern emotional coldness associated with masculinity be coloring this reading, too?) Feste is obviously one of the cleverest people in the play. "Cucullus non facit monachum" indeed! As a critique of courtly love, this act accomplishes a lot, and Feste comes out being one of the least foolish people on the stage.ACT II: Malvolio (literally, from the Latin, "ill will"), the only character who takes himself much too seriously, is tricked into the tomfoolery that he himself so deplores, ultimately proving Feste right: it's not just the role of the fool to entertain folly.ACT III: Even though, considering Malvolio's transformation from joy-hating blowhard into romantic lover is a drastic one, that Olivia thinks him mad might be telling. Is there any room here for a sort of Foucauldian discussion of what constitutes "madness and civilization" in Elizabethan England? From the little that I've seen of the scholarly literature, I haven't yet seen any discussions that run along these lines.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There is brilliance in this play, as there is in all of Shakespeare's work... but...Well, this one doesn't live up to the others, at least not in the reading of the script. I could not attach myself to any of the characters, and while I often have to reread the words and the footnotes to gain any understanding of the plot, this one felt hollow to me, even after I could grasp what was going on.The brilliance comes in much of the twisting of words and understandings of phrases. Shakespeare was a wordsmith, there is no doubt about that.... but most of the time, I feel like he was also incredibly connected to his characters, his audience, his stories. This one felt flimsy to me.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Honestly, I am not all that into reading plays. However, I am so into gender-bender that I had to read 12th night. The whole idea of a girl dressing up as a boy and fooling everyone is so interesting to me. The thing that put me off from this book was the fact that the emotions that the characters were feeling were not as evident just from reading this play. I mean, it was like saying "I feel that I love you". It is not as moving as if the author had described what the feeling is. For some reason, I loved Julius Cesar, Othello, and sort of liked "As you like it". So maybe I am just not into this story that much.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    My relationship with the Bard’s works began when, at the tender age of six, I went to a Shakespeare in the Park performance of Much Ado About Nothing and had the time of my life. Since then, it’s been up and down at times with me and Will, as I’ve been alternately befuddled, entranced, delighted, disturbed, and moved by his handiwork. It was only last year, however, that I really began reading his plays in earnest—up until then, my exposure had been limited solely to films and live performances. I've been taking them slowly, picking up a play as the inclination strikes, and not following any particular order.Despite the fact that it is critically regarded as one of Shakespeare's best and most advanced comedies, I have to say that so far Twelfth Night is my least favorite of the lot. I’m hoping it’s not because it was assigned for a class, when all the others I picked up of my own volition. Either way, I found I couldn’t connect to any of these characters, neither when I read the play nor when I watched the 1996 Trevor Nunn film (and let me tell you, if Helena Bonham Carter can’t make me feel for Olivia, no one can). They made for an interesting group to observe— not the uninvolved, almost scientific word. There is no Puck or Rosalind or Beatrice or Shylock to give this comedy some sort of heart or animating spirit. Viola and Feste come closest, simply because they are vehicles for some of Shakespeare's best poetry and wordplay—but even then, the language is more interesting than its bearers. Indeed, I would say this play is most interesting when looked at mostly for how it uses language and what it has to say about it.The critics are right in commending Twelfth Night for its clever wordplay and complex social vision, but to my mind Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream are far more entertaining, and The Merchant of Venice deeper.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love this play. Shakespeare's comedies are very enjoyable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Shipwrecked siblings, love-struck Dukes and Duchesses, silly servants and misplaced affections. I enjoyed this very much. No one does confusion of identity as well as Shakespeare, and when it's one of his comedies, there is always a happy ending.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I listened to this play a year ago and forgot to add to my Library Thing list. So the plot isn't fresh in my mind. I do remember that the plot is quite complicated with numerous mistaken identities, disguises and switching of roles. The plot is so convoluted that I recommend drafting a chart to keep track of the characters and their multiple identities. There is a mean joke played on a Puritan character in the play which was probably funny to 16th Century theater audiences. However, I fou...more I listened to this play a year ago and forgot to add to my Goodreads list. So the plot isn't fresh in my mind. I do remember that the plot is quite complicated with numerous mistaken identities, disguises and switching of roles. The plot is so convoluted that I recommend drafting a chart to keep track of the characters and their multiple identities. There is a mean joke played on a Puritan character in the play which was probably funny to 16th Century theater audiences. However, I found it to be cruel and not very funny. Read in December, 2007
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My favorite Shakespearean comedy (partially because I portrayed Sir Toby in a high school production) with the perfect mix of witty dialogue, physical humor and characterization.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The text of the play is mostly a delight, though there are a few toothsome things to mull over after the play is done. Its end of multiple marriages is seemingly tidy, but a few characters are left out in the cold, including Antonio, whose love for Sebastian may be the truest and most steadfast love in the play.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this book with my girlfriend and it was ok but not one of my most liked books ever. At times it's a little hard to understand if you don't have the spark notes or some other translation like it, but if you like plays and have never read it I recommend it to you, for everyone else you.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I read this play in high school. I immediately connected with Viola who hid her true identity (and her emotions) from society. Though modern critics look at (and/or analyze) the story's use of homosexuality and gender/sexual politics, I can't break from my initial path of loving the story for Viola's strength in hiding her identity and love.