Twelfth Night

Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition

James Schiffer, Joseph Candido, Brian Vickers

• Publisher: The Arden Shakespeare
• Year: 2025
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350452152
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Shakespeare Drama
• Index: Literature

This new volume in the Shakespeare: The Critical Tradition increases our knowledge of how Twelfth Night was received and understood by critics, editors and general readers. The volume offers, in separate sections, both critical opinions about the play across the centuries and an evaluation of their positions within and their impact on the reception of the play. The volume features criticism from key literary figures such as Thomas De Quincey, Charles Knight, Mary Cowden Clarke, Charles Lamb, George Bernard Shaw and Caroline F. E. Spurgeon. The chronological arrangement of the text-excerpts engages the readers in a direct and unbiased dialogue, whereas the introduction offers a critical evaluation from a current stance, including modern theories and methods. The volume makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Twelfth Night and of the traditions of Shakespearean criticism surrounding it as they have developed from century to century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• General editor’s preface
• General editors’ preface to the revised series
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: George Chalmers, on the date of composition of Twelfth Night: 1799
• Chapter 2: Francis Douce, comments on Twelfth Night and betrothals in early modern England: 1807
• Chapter 3: August Wilhelm von Schlegel, on love as ‘fancy’ in Twelfth Night: 1815
• Chapter 4: Nathan Drake, commentary on Twelfth Night: 1817
• Chapter 5: William Hazlitt, exuberant praise of characters in Twelfth Night: 1817
• Chapter 6: Charles Lamb, recollections of a performance of Twelfth Night: 1822
• Chapter 7: Augustine Skottowe, speculations about Shakespeare’s sources for Twelfth Night: 1824
• Chapter 8: James Boaden, on Mrs Jordan as Viola: 1831
• Chapter 9: John Payne Collier, on discovering an account of a 1602 performance of Twelfth Night: 1831
• Chapter 10: Anna Brownell Jameson, a defense of Viola and Olivia: 1832
• Chapter 11: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, notes on a few passages from Twelfth Night: 1836
• Chapter 12: Henry Hallam, a less-than-high appraisal of Twelfth Night: 1839
• Chapter 13: Thomas Penson De Quincey, a biographical speculation about Orsino’s advice to Cesario: 1842
• Chapter 14: Charles Knight, comments on Twelfth Night costumes and other matters: (c. 1842)[1]
• Chapter 15: Joseph Hunter, the discovery of Manningham’s diary and its implications: 1844
• Chapter 16: Hermann Ulrici, on life as a Twelfth Night lottery: 1846
• Chapter 17: Henry Norman Hudson, on characters in Twelfth Night: 1848
• Chapter 18: Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke, Viola’s and Sebastian’s imagined childhood: 18511
• Chapter 19: Richard Grant White, a critique of Johnson’s and Malone’s commentary on Viola: 1854
• Chapter 20: William Watkiss Lloyd, an introduction to Twelfth Night: 1856
• Chapter 21: Charles Bathurst, on Shakespeare’s versification in Twelfth Night: 1857
• Chapter 22: Georg Gottfried Gervinus, Orsino ‘more in love with his love, than with his mistress’: 1863
• Chapter 23: Thomas Kenny, faint praise for Twelfth Night: 1864
• Chapter 24: Richard Grant White, on Romeo and Orsino in love: 1865
• Chapter 25: John Abraham Heraud, on the universal and the particular in Twelfth Night: 1865
• Chapter 26: Jean-Baptiste Joseph Émile Montégut, the Carnival World of Twelfth Night: 1867
• Chapter 27: Henry Giles, commentary on Twelfth Night: 1868
• Chapter 28: Henry Joseph Ruggles, language and imagery and theme in Twelfth Night: 1870
• Chapter 29: Richard Simpson, Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Twelfth Night: 1870
• Chapter 30: Frederick Gard Fleay, a claim that Shakespeare wrote the romantic plot much earlier than the satiric plot: 1874
• Chapter 31: Edward Dowden, speculations about Shakespeare, Royalists and Roundheads: 1875
• Chapter 32: John Weiss, the clown in Twelfth Night: 1876
• Chapter 33: Edward Dowden, the balance of romance, melancholy and satire in Twelfth Night: 1877
• Chapter 34: Frederick James Furnivall, Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s three ‘sparkling, Sunny, or Sweet-Time Comedies’: 177
• Chapter 35: Denton Jacques Snider, Shakespeare’s comic art in Twelfth Night: 1877
• Chapter 36: James Spedding, the division of acts in Twelfth Night: 1879
• Chapter 37: Charles Henry Coote, on the ‘new map with the augmentation of the Indies’: 1879
• Chapter 38: Peter Augustin Daniel, a time analysis of the plots in Twelfth Night: 1878
• Chapter 39: Algernon Charles Swinburne, Twelfth Night and Rabelais: 1880
• Chapter 40: James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, on the dates and locations of early performances of Twelfth Night: 1881
• Chapter 41: William Archer, a review of Henry Irving’s production of Twelfth Night: 1884
• Chapter 42: Helena Saville Faucit, Lady Martin, Shakespeare’s female characters disguised as boys: 1885
• Chapter 43: Arthur William Symons, Shakespeare’s ‘farewell to mirth’: 1888
• Chapter 44: Barrett Wendell, Twelfth Night a ‘masterpiece of recapitulation’: 1894
• Chapter 45: George Bernard Shaw, a review of William Poel’s production of Twelfth Night: 1895
• Chapter 46: Frederick Samuel Boas, Twelfth Night a ‘tangle of human passions’: 1896
• Chapter 47: Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, commentary on Twelfth Night: 1898
• Chapter 48: Charles Harold Herford, the influence of Jonsonian ‘humours’ comedy on Twelfth Night: 1899
• Chapter 49: Herbert Beerbohm Tree, on the staging of Shakespeare: 1900
• Chapter 50: William Poel, Response to Herbert Beerbohm Tree: 1900
• Chapter 51: William Hansell Fleming, the plot of Twelfth Night: 1901
• Chapter 52: Richard Green Moulton, analysis of the two plots in Twelfth Night: 1903
• Chapter 53: Thomas Raynesford Lounsbury, reflections on Shakespeare’s eighteenth-century editors: 1906
• Chapter 54: Morton Luce, from ‘Introduction’ to the Arden Twelfth Night: 1906
• Chapter 55: Maurice Henry Hewlett, a ‘Special Introduction’ to Twelfth Night: 1907
• Chapter 56: Edmund Kerchever Chambers, commentary on Twelfth Night and a possible historical model for Malvolio: 1907
• Chapter 57: Arthur Quiller-Couch, Twelfth Night ‘divinely poetical, but ghostly’: 1908
• Chapter 58: Frank Harris, Orsino as a portrait of the artist: 1909
• Chapter 59: John Edward Masefield, Twelfth Night ‘the best English comedy’: 1911
• Chapter 60: Harley Granville-Barker, ‘Preface’ to a production of Twelfth Night: 1912
• Chapter 61: Stopford Augustus Brooke, ‘No play is more exclusively, more fantastically gay’: 1913
• Chapter 62: William Poel, comments on Shakespeare’s dramatic art, the Elizabeth Stage Society and a mangled performance of Twelfth Night: 1913
• Chapter 63: Morris Palmer Tilley, the ‘organic unity’ of Twelfth Night: 1914
• Chapter 64: William Winter, Twelfth Night on Stage: 1915
• Chapter 65: Andrew Cecil Bradley, in praise of Feste: 1916
• Chapter 66: Israel Gollancz, another possible model for Malvolio: 1916
• Chapter 67: Marie Channing Linthicum, Malvolio’s Cross-Gartered Yellow Stockings: 1927
• Chapter 68: Alwin Thaler, on the ‘celerity of mating’ at the conclusion to Twelfth Night: 1929
• Chapter 69: William Empson, ambiguity in a passage from Twelfth Night: 1930
• Chapter 70: Paul Mueschke and Jeannette Fleisher, on Shakespeare’s debt to Jonsonian humours comedy in Twelfth Night: 1933
• Chapter 71: Caroline Francis Eleanor Spurgeon, imagery in Twelfth Night: 1935
• Chapter 72: Enid Elder Hancock Welsford, a comparison of Touchstone and Feste: 1935
• Chapter 73: John Middleton Murry, on Twelfth Night’s ‘silvery undertone of sadness’: 1936
• Chapter 74: Elmer Edgar Stoll, in praise of Viola: 1937
• Chapter 75: John William Draper, Shakespeare’s Illyria: 1941
• Chapter 76: John William Draper, the theme of Twelfth Night: 1950
• Notes
• A select bibliography
• Permissions
• Index