| Pretty nearly everybody in it but Viola and Sebastian… is at the extreme point where from excess of something or other he is about to be converted into something else. | Goddard, 1951 on extreme and excess |
| Every character has his masks | Summers, 1955 on masks |
| Malvolio is mad in his refusal to change… | Lamb, 1980 on Malvolio and change |
| Change is the essence of sanity in Twelfth Night | Lamb, 1980 on change |
| Identity and disguise motivate much of the action in the Twelfth Night. | Greif, 1981 on identity and disguise |
| There is something anarchal about sexual desire which is to be feared, and the fear is less moral than political | Eagleton, 1986 on sexual desire |
| But a silly play, not relating to the name or day | Pepys 1661 on tradition of twelfth night |
| “…the drama is about death as much as it is love” | Barton on death and love |
| [In Twelfth Night there is] a silvery undertone of sadness, which makes it perhaps the loveliest of allShakespeare’s high comedies | Middleton Murray, 1936 on sadness |
| There is such thing as coming to a man’s estate, such a hard reality, for instance, as marriage, which all the cakes and ale will not turn into what it is not. | Goddard, 1951 on cakes and ale |
| The reality of wind and rain wins out, the monotony of the everyday… there is nothing for it but resignation, the wise acceptance of the Fool. | Barton, 1972 on monotony |
| Feste is an outsider because his experience has damaged his capacity for joy | French, 1981 on Feste |
| [The subplot characters are frustrated because] the alternative to being attached to a big household like Olivia’s would be the beach, the doorway, hopelessness. | Pennington, 1992 on subplot characters and their motivations |
| “Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a feminist play at its heart, asserting the equality of men and women” | Williams on feminism |
| “Twelfth Night is a play with a ‘moral process’ at work” | Hollander on morality |
| “Twelfth Night is ultimately a play about substitutes” | Kiberd on substitutes |
| “The revelers and practical jokers… are the least sympathetic players in Twelfth Night” | Bloom on subplot characters |
| “Like all the other strongest plays by Shakespeare, Twelfth Night is of no genre” | Bloom on genre |
| “As a sycophant, a social climber and an officious snob, [Malvolio] well deserves to be put back in his place” | Levin on Malvolio and ambition |
| Feste [is]… the only sane character in a wild play” | Bloom on Feste |
| We cannot but feel very sorry for [Feste]… He is fully justified, and he begs so amusingly that we welcome his begging; but shameless it is. | Bradley on empathy for Feste |
| The movement of the whole play is that of a party | Hollander on play’s structure |
| in both the Duke’s and Olivia’s case, Cesario kills ‘the flock of all affections else’ | Hollander on effect of Cesario |
| The wise and the generous, then, survive their foolish mistakes, and profit | Williams on status |
| The confrontation of Sebastian and Cesario-Viola… provides the means for the discarding of all the lovers’ masks. | Summers on conclusion |
| “The apparently dead may be only hidden; the love-lorn are not hurting so very much.” | Davies on the dead and deception |
| Malvolio is still around, closing the theaters | Pennington, 1992 on Malvolio and Puritans |
| Viola, is herself in a kind of passive zany, since who else would fall in love with the self- intoxicated Orsino? | Bloom, 1987 on Viola |
| Characters in love are simultaneously at their most ‘real’ and ‘unreal,’ most true and most feigning | Eagleton, 1986 on characters in love |
| The disguised Viola becomes the agent required to free Orsino and Olivia from the bondage of their self- delusions. | Greif, 1981 on Viola’s role |
| The tensions implicit in Shakespearean comedy are tensions of willed ignorance followed by knowledge. | Garber, 1980 on tensions in comedy |
| [Malvolio] too is in the prison of his ego, but for him it is a gorgeous palace… In fact Malvolio is fully happy only when he is alone | Leggatt, 1974 on Malvolio |
| [Feste] does not attempt to judge, or even to reason. He simply states fact | Barton, 1972 on Feste’s purpose |
| [Feste] has an air of knowing more of life than anyone else- too much, in fact… | Barber, 1959 on Feste’s wisdom |
| Shakespeare has built a world out of music and melancholy. | Van Doren, 1939 on music |
| We are all, in varying degrees, insane… Some have graceful poetic madness, others a madness grotesque and trivial. | E. Montégut, 1867 on madness |
| He (Malvolio) has Wit, Learning, and Discernment, but temper’d with an Allay of Envy, Self-Love, andDetraction | Steele, 1711 on Malvolio |
| “The humiliation of Olivia in front of everyone when it turns out she’s married the wrong teenager” | Bartlett, 2007 RSC on Olivia at the end of the play |
| “Viola won’t marry Orsino until she has her ownwomen’s clothes back and is therefore a woman again.” | McEvoy, 2018 on the perception of gender |
| “That part of [Olivia’s] love which is composed of her sexual desire for him is not necessarily compromised by Sebastian having a different gender to Viola.” | McEvoy, 2018 on Olivia and sexual desire |
| “[Shakespeare suggests] sexual identity is more plural, discontinuous and volatile” | Ryan, 2002 on gender |
| “It is perfectly true that Malvolio’s own desire for Olivia is inextricably bound up with his own ambition” | Levin, 1985 |
Twelfth Night- critical quotations
July 26, 2019