Director's Note | Twelfth Night

DIRECTOR'S NOTE

Twelfth Night is a profoundly beautiful play about unrequited love, grief, and the exploration of self and identity. It is one of Shakespeare's most famous and beloved romantic comedies. I say ‘romantic comedy’, because it almost defies genre: it’s not a pure comedy like Midsummer Night’s Dream, nor a pastoral romance like As You Like It, nor a pure tragedy like Hamlet or Othello. Twelfth Night is really a farewell to comedy, and begins Shakespeare’s more mature period, culminating in his writing the great tragedies of King Lear and Macbeth.

Thematically, Twelfth Night explores how we can experience the extremes of life’s excesses in one breath, and then in the next breath, have them disappear. This is exemplified in Orsino’s famous first lines:

If music be the food of love, play on.

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken and so die.

That strain again! It had a dying fall.

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odor. Enough; no more.

’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

As is always the case with Shakespeare, where you find one thing, you inevitably encounter its opposite. To desire something means you have lost or been denied something. You desire what you cannot have. You pine for what you have lost. When you lose someone – like Viola, Olivia and Sebastian have – you desperately want them back. So while the characters are all drowning in an excess of one thing, they also live in the absence of something else. They have lost parents, siblings, friends, privilege, status, health. They all yearn for what is missing. Which puts a great ache, and great mystery, at the heart of the play.

This ache mirrors Shakespeare’s own life. Twelfth Night was likely first performed in 1602: six years after the death of his son Hamnet, and mere months after the death of Shakespeare’s father John.

So the play begins in loss. With the playwright possibly working out his own suffering, his own deep grief. But there is a lean towards joy. As the characters desire what is missing, as they hope and wish for a rescue from drowning, the play transitions into joy.

With one breath we grieve and suffer, on the next breath we laugh and love.

Shakespeare’s plays find you when you need them most.

I find myself working on this play during moments of reflection in my life, when I need to slow down, to savour, and appreciate. Many of the characters also need to slow down, to savour life, and appreciate what they already have. Orsino already has a deep friendship with Cesario/Viola, yet he’s blinded by his lust for Olivia. For her part, Olivia is surrounded by the joy, laughter and delights of her cousin Toby, yet can’t escape the deep grief of losing her father and brother. Sebastian can’t seem to appreciate the kindness of his friend Antonia, and Toby can’t appreciate his friendship with Andrea. And all the characters need to savour the sage words of advice, and truth-telling of the fool Feste. If only they could all see what was already in front of them!

I take great comfort knowing that, like me, the audience will see themselves, their stories, their love, loss and laughter, represented in the many characters and stories of the play. Twelfth Night reminds us that the pendulum of our lives swings madly from joy to sorrow, from love to loss. It promises that after grief, we will again find love. After suffering, we will again find joy – even though the rain, it raineth every day.

- Tim Welham

Why this play?