| Lorna Hutchson | the one who spoke of Viola’s “rhetorical attractiveness” |
| Lisa Hopkins | the one who spoke of marriage as part of the comedy form and said that Shakespeare challenges it |
| David Bevington | the one who spoke about Malvolio as “the most pointed satire Shakepeare ever wrote” |
| David Schalkwyk | the one who wrote the Connell Guide and spoke of Orsino’s infatuation with love (“if music be the food of love, he quickly tires of it”); sexual imagery in Scene 1, Act 1; the idea that the name Viola also comes from “violation” and “violence”; argues that “same sex desire is marginalised” |
| Joseph Pequigney | the one who argued that basically everyone is Twelfth Night is bisexual, especially Olivia, Antonio and Sebastian (“bisexual experiences are not the exception but the rule”) |
| C.L Barber | the one who wrote about Twelfth Night (among others) as a “saturnalian comedy” and talked about elements of the festival in the play |
| Keir Elam | the one who wrote the introduction to our copy of Twelfth Night and has lots of ideas on everything |
| Michael Shapiro | the one who wrote the essay on gender and theatricality in which he argues that Orsino continues to refer to Viola as a boy and this underscores the fact that she was played by a boy actor at the time (calls the references to gender a “reflexive allusion”) |
| Palfrey | the one who analysed Viola’s half lines in speech and argues that she displays her sense of paralysis and passivity |
| Kiernan Ryan | the one who calls Twelfth Night an “elegy for comedy itself” |
| Marjorie Garber | the one who says that “Shakespeare is concerned with the double nature of all human beings” especially when it comes to gender |
| Francois Laroque | the one talks about the festive tradition and says it grants Shakespeare a “world of phrases, images and symbols” |
| John Hollander | the one who wrote that confusing essay on indulgence and the humours but has a good point about the first scene, saying Orsino’s food, love and music speech sets out the key themes for the play |
| R.W Maslen | the one who talks about the resilience of the comic form despite censorship and societal problems (e.g. Puritan threats, plague) |
| Roger Warren | the one who pointed out that Viola risks revealing her identity by standing up for women in love in Scene 4, Act 2 and analysed her adopting of Orsino’s “we (men)” pronouns |
| Philip Edwards | the one who says that the festive comedies do not end in clarification, claiming “a strong magic is created: and it is questioned” |
Critical Critics (Twelfth Night)
July 25, 2019