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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Shakespeare鈥檚 great comedies, which plays in the space between marriage, love and desire. By convention a wedding means a happy ending and here there are three, but neither Orsino nor Viola, Olivia nor Sebastian know much of each other鈥檚 true character and even the identities of the twins Viola and Sebastian have only just been revealed to their spouses to be. These twins gain some financial security but it is unclear what precisely the older Orsino and Olivia find enduringly attractive in the adolescent objects of their love. Meanwhile their hopes and illusions are framed by the fury of Malvolio, tricked into trusting his mistress Olivia loved him and who swears an undefined revenge on all those who mocked him.

With

Pascale Aebischer
Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Performance Studies at the University of Exeter

Michael Dobson
Professor of Shakespeare Studies and Director of the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham

And

Emma Smith
Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford

Produced by Simon Tillotson, Victoria Brignell and Luke Mulhall

Reading list:

C.L. Barber, Shakespeare鈥檚 Festive Comedies: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom (first published 1959; Princeton University Press, 2011)

Simone Chess, 鈥楺ueer Residue: Boy Actors鈥� Adult Careers in Early Modern England鈥� (Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 19.4, 2020)

Callan Davies, What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620 (Routledge, 2023)

Frances E. Dolan, Twelfth Night: Language and Writing (Bloomsbury, 2014)

John Drakakis (ed.), Alternative Shakespeares (Psychology Press, 2002), especially 鈥楧isrupting Sexual Difference: Meaning and Gender in the Comedies鈥� by Catherine Belsey

Bart van Es, Shakespeare鈥檚 Comedies: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2016)

Sonya Freeman Loftis, Mardy Philippian and Justin P. Shaw (eds.), Inclusive Shakespeares: Identity, Pedagogy, Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), especially 鈥樷�滻 am all the daughters of my father鈥檚 house, and all the brothers too鈥�: Genderfluid Potentiality in As You Like It and Twelfth Night鈥� by Eric Brinkman

Ezra Horbury, 鈥楾ransgender Reassessments of the Cross-Dressed Page in Shakespeare, Philaster, and The Honest Man鈥檚 Fortune鈥� (Shakespeare Quarterly 73, 2022)

Jean Howard, 鈥楥rossdressing, the theatre, and gender struggle in early modern England鈥� (Shakespeare Quarterly 39, 1988)

Harry McCarthy, Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare's England (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

William Shakespeare (eds. Michael Dobson and Molly Mahood), Twelfth Night (Penguin, 2005)

William Shakespeare (ed. Keir Elam), Twelfth Night (Arden Shakespeare, 2008)

Emma Smith, This is Shakespeare: How to Read the World's Greatest Playwright (Pelican, 2019)

Victoria Sparey, Shakespeare鈥檚 Adolescents: Age, Gender and the Body in Shakespearean Performance and Early Modern Culture (Manchester University Press, 2024)

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