Twelfth Night Critics

Jonathan Bates
1. 'Cesario' is partly a device to give viola an active voice, to enable her to break the shackles of passivity
2. [In Shakespearean comedy] the characters loose themselves to find themselves
3. Viola is diminished when bereaved of her invented second self
4. ...Alluring androgyny is implied here ('and all is semblative a woman's part')
5. ...There is an escapable poignancy to the images of loss in Twelfth Night...
6. Shakespeare's Illyria is a place of self-love
Directors
1. John Barton 1969
  1. Used the sound of the sea
  2. Non-traditional
2. John Caird 1983
  1. Melancholy/sadness
  2. Confinement imagery
3. Ian Judge 1994
  1. Focuses on the comedy
4. Adrian Noble 1997
  1. Exaggerated comedy
  2. 'Gimmicky'
5. Sir Henry Irving
  1. 'Whose gaunt and sober Malvolio possessed an innate dignity which added pathos to his humiliation'
C.L.Barber
1. Lots of gender fluidity
2. 'Orsinos love for Cesario come from his restless sensibility that he cannot find an object of love'
3. 'The fundamental distinction the play brings home to us is the difference between men and woman'
Steve Davies
1. The use of male actors in the renaissance context of the play adds to the homoerotic quality of the relationship between Orsino and Cesario
2. 'Most of us will never have the chance to see the play in the way it was designed, that is, with the boy-actor biasing the homoerotic undertones towards the pederastic'
Dr Pamela Bickley
1. 'His language (as well as conveying sexual innuendo) emphasises Violas androgyny'
2. 'Gender itself is at the forefront of comedy'
3. 'Gender is certainly fluid and unstable in this love triangle'
4. 'Viola herself does not appear to relish the empowering opportunities of her disguise'
5. 'Orsino's final words maintain the fiction of his masculinity'
6. 'Yet viola is trapped by her disguise and uneasy at the falseness it causes'
Traditional critics
1. In 1632 King Charles I wrote 'Malvolio' in place of the play's title in his own copy of the play
  1. Many traditional critics were focused on Malvolio's plot such as Leonard Digges and Dr samuel Johnson
2. William Hazlitt: 'It is perhaps too good-natured for a comedy'
3. Charles Lamb: 'He [Malvolio] becomes comic but by accident'
4. Bradly calls him [Feste] 'our wise, happy, melodious fool' who links the love plot and comic plot of the play, appearing in both
5. Harold Jenkins: 'The love-delusions of Malvolio, brilliant as they are, fall into perspective as a parody'

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Twelfth Night Critics

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