Dating Twelfth Night

 

 

"Twelfe Night, Or what You Will," was first printed in the folio of 1623, where it occupied 21 pages in the "Comedies," division. It also appears in the same form in three later folios.

 

There is no record of the performance of "Twelfth-Night" at court, nor is there any men­tion of it in the books at Stationers' Hall until November 8, 1623, when it was registered by Blount and Jaggard, to be included in the first folio of "Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies" listed under the double title, "Twelfth-Night, or What You Will," with acts and scenes duly noted.

 

It has not been accurately determined when the play was first written, but, according to the eye-witness evidence of a barrister (whose diary is preserved in the British Museum) it is known to have been performed during the celebration of the Readers' Feast at the Middle Temple on February 2, 1602.

 

Paraphrased with modern English, the barrister’s note stated that on February, 1601 or 1602 a play called Twelve-Night, or What You Will, similar to the Com­edy of Errors, or Menechmi in Plautus, was performed at our festival but with a storyline much closer to the Italian play, Inganni.

 

The steward was led to believe his lady, a widow, was in love with him. A counterfeit letter, supposedly from his lady, was given to him in which she told him what she liked best in him by prescribing bizarre gestures for him to emulate and describing gaudy clothing to be worn.

 

Unfortunately, when he put the letter writer’s advice into action the party of his affections thought he was mad.

 

(end quote)

 

The barrister’s remarkable entry was pointed out in the "History of English Dramatic Poetry and the Stage," published in 1831, and the Rev. Joseph Hunter, in his “Disquisition on The Tempest,” published in 1839, established that it was made by a person named Manningham.

 

Even if it there are objections, there is no evidence to show the comedy was composed shortly before its production at the Middle Temple, it may be argued that there is proof it was written after the publication of the translation of Linschoten's "Discours of Voyages into the East and West Indies.”

 

In Act 2 scene 2, Maria says of Maivolio: "He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the augmentation of the Indies."

 

Linschoten's "Discours of Voyages" was translated into English in 1598, and in that volume the phrase "the new map with the aug­mentation of the Indies" is inserted.

 

Meres takes no notice of "Twelfth-Night" in his listing of plays, published in the same year, and we may conclude therefore that the Comedy was not yet in existence.

 

The words “new map,” used by Shakespeare, may indicate that Linschoten's “Discours” made its appearance long before “Twelfth­Night” was produced.

 

With all due consideration the period of its creation was most likely at the end of 1600 or the beginning of 1601.

 

It’s possible the play was performed at the Globe in the summer of the same year, and then, about six months later, produced at the Middle Temple because of its popularity.

 

Several original copies of “Twelfth-Night,” in English, French, and Italian, have been pointed out, nearly all of them discovered within the 20th century.

 

An author named Barnabe Rich, who was brought up a soldier, published an undated volume which he called "Rich his Farewell to Military Profession," but believed to have been published between 1578 and 1581.

 

A reprint of the book appeared in 1606 containing a novel titled "Apolonius and Silla," which has many similar points to Shakespeare's comedy.

 

If Shakespeare made the contents available for this publication, then Twelfth Night must have been written prior to 1606.

 

There is one small discrepancy between the two stories which deserves attention.

 

Manningham, in his diary, calls Olivia a “widow,” and in Rich's novel the Lady Julina, in comparison to Olivia, is a widow, but in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night she was not married.

 

It is possible that when the comedy was performed on Feb­ruary 2, 1601-2, she was a widow, and the author subsequently made the change; but its more likely, as Olivia must have been in mourn­ing for the loss of her brother, that Manning­ham mistook her condition, and concluded she lamented the loss of her husband.

 

Rich did not provide at list of titles from where he obtained his information, but we may conclude he obtained his primary material from the Italian of Bandello, or from the French of Belleforest.

 

Two Italian plays, the printed versions of which have survived till the present day, were composed by Bandello.

 

Manningham says Shakespeare's Twelfth-Night was “most like and nearer to the Italian production called Inganni."

 

It was first acted in 1547 and the earliest edition of it, with which I am ac­quainted, did not appear until 1582 when it bore the title of “Gl' Inganni Comedia del Signor N S”.

 

The other Italian drama, based on Bandello's novel, bears a similar title “GI' Ingannati Commedia degl' Accademici Intronati di Siena”, which was printed several times, circa 1611.

 

Whether Shakespeare saw either of these pieces before he wrote "Twelfth-Night" is unknown, but looking at the terms Manningham uses, it appears as if it was founded upon Inganni when "Twelfth ­Night" was acted at the Temple on February 2, 1602.

 

In the details of the plot, as well as in the con­duct and characters of the two plays, there is some resemblance between Gl' Inganni and "Twelfth-Night;" but Shakespeare gave an intellectual  and an actual eleva­tion to the whole subject, by the way he has treated the play and transformed a low comedy into an extraordinary romantic adventure.

 

In both Italian productions the material is coarse peasant-like, by the introduction of quacks, windbags, Nit-pickers, and domestics, who deal in the crudest jokes, and are guilty of the grossest horseplay.

 

Shakespeare shows his infinite superiority everywhere.

 

In the more serious portions of his story he uses incidents provided by precursors as the mere framework for the building of his own striking structure; and for the funny scenes he seems has drawn upon his own brilliance.

 

SOURCE: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, comprising his plays and poems. World Syndicate Company, Inc, New York, 1926.