Twelfth Night (The Pelican Shakespeare) Paperback – July 5, 2016

Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, filled with mistaken identities, witty wordplay, and themes of love and disguise. The play follows Viola, who, after a shipwreck, disguises herself as a man and becomes entangled in a love triangle involving Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, the subplot featuring Malvolio’s humiliation adds layers of humor and intrigue. With its lively characters and clever twists, Twelfth Night remains a timeless exploration of love, identity, and human folly.

Good book. My Great niece had the leading part in college show so I wanted to read the book.

It may be a sacrilege to give any work by the good old Bard a rating below 5 stars, but I have to say I was a bit underwhelmed with this particular play. Perhaps I expected too much after having read some of his other comedies, but this one seemed to fall substantially below the earlier ones I've read ('Much Ado About Nothing," "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Merchant of Venice," "The Taming of the Shrew" and "As You Like It").Initially, it showed promise: a rollicking comedy of errors with the Count Orsino intent upon wooing Lady Olivia, who instead falls for the cross-dressing Viola, who is doing the wooing on Orsino's behalf and who herself is infatuated with Orsino! Things become all the more involved when Viola's recently ship-wrecked twin brother Sebastian arrives and Olivia confuses him for the man she thought was Viola! This plotline was truly entertaining, yet another Shakespearian triumph in ingenuity. Unfortunately, while this was probably supposed to be the center of the story, a great deal of the play also revolves around Olivia's drunken uncle Toby, her mischievous chambermaid Maria, her idiotic suitor Andrew and Feste, her fool. These were also quite riveting characters in their own way, but to me it seems rather unusual that they should have so many lines, while poor old lovelorn Orsino has so few. I would have liked to have seen him recite more amazing lines as he did early in the first scene ("If music be the food of love...") His character did not lack depth in my opinion, only development. I would have also liked to hear more from Viola as herself, rather than as the man she pretended to be. And the conclusion, while it did tie together the loose ends seemed rather hasty. But, alas, who am I to critique Bill Shakespeare?!Taken in isolation, I would say this play was nevertheless quite absorbing and well worth reading! But taken in conjunction with his other plays, I would not rank this at the very top.

Twelfth Night is a typical Shakespearean comedy. It contains all the standard conceits: shipwrecks, mistaken identities, long lost kin and various love triangles. As per usual, these somehow get resolved harmoniously in the final scene.It is Shakespeare so of course there is ingenious wordplay, witticisms, etc. The character of the fool is particularly well drawn in Twelfth Night. He seems cleverer by half than the assorted aristocracy.However, most of the modern focus in Twelfth Night is because one of its main female protagonists disguises herself as a man, falls in love with a man and has a woman, who falls for the disguise, fall in love with her. This is all supposed to be very germane to modern gender studies/issues.I am not convinced Shakespeare really says much of relevance to contemporary cultural concerns but I am not an expert. These just don’t seem to me, as they do to other commentators, central to the play.What I found is another masterpiece of Shakespearean comedy. One can almost be forgetful of how lucky we are that Shakespeare wrote so many even if they do seem to revolve around similar plot conceits. Highly recommended (although it hardly needs another recommendation).

This is definitely a classic Shakespearean comedy, complete with disguises, intrigue, love, humor, and a lot of fun. In all honesty, I am not generally a big fan of comedies, but this is definitely an example of an exception. Really, it will never be considered Shakespeare's greatest, but the plot, characters, disguise and romantic elements, and even just the thought of how it would even work on stage when it was originally performed, all contribute to a great mix of humor. As to the edition itself, I found it to be greatly helpful in understanding the action in the play. It has a layout which places each page of the play opposite a page of notes, definitions, explanations, and other things needed to understand that page more thoroughly. While I didn't always need it, I was certainly glad to have it whenever I ran into a turn of language that was unfamiliar, and I definitely appreciated the scene-by-scene summaries. Really, if you want to or need to read Shakespeare, an edition such as this is really the way to go, especially until you get more accustomed to it.

This is my favorite Shakespeare play, and the origin of the phrase, "You da man!" XDThe formatting could be better, and I suppose for people who aren't used to reading period literature, it could be difficult to understand without footnotes, but I was glad to get a copy so cheaply since I wanted to refer to some of the great one-liners in it.If you want footnotes, look up the Oxford University Press versions. At least their physical books have copious and very educational footnotes.