production of
Twelfth Night
has to make decisions about whether his or her production will attempt to balance the elements of light and dark in the play, or to go to one extreme or the other. Productions by the RSC demonstrate a wide variety of approaches, and the difficulty in succeeding with this emotionally complex play is shown in its reviews. Directors have invariably been criticized for omitting comedy, neglecting depth of emotion, or failing to find a balance between the two.
From the 1960s onward a definite shift took place in which the darker elements became the central focus—aspects such as the treatment of madness, sexuality, and the character of Feste were radically reexamined, altering the tone of the play:
Twelfth Night
is widely accepted as a supreme harmonizing of the romantic and the comic, sweet and the astringent. The admirable production, then, is held to be one which holds these elements in balance. It is in the inflection which a production gives to
Twelfth Night
that the special interest lies. And this inflection has undoubtedly modulated in recent years. Broadly, and crudely:
Twelfth Night
used to be funny, and is now much less so. What has happened? 44
John Barton’s 1969 staging is widely considered a landmark production because it was markedly different in tone from previous productions. His exploration of the psychological complexity of the characters created for one critic “the most austere
Twelfth Night
I have seen”; 45 for another it was suffused with “a kind of wintry melancholy.” 46 The program notes pointed to this darker reading:
For some characters [Orsino, Viola, Olivia, and Sebastian] … holiday perpetuates itself … The other characters of the comedy, by contrast, are exiled into reality. For most of them, holiday is paid for in ways that have real life consequences … None of these characters can be absorbed into the harmony of the romantic plot. For the rest of us … the play is done and we return to normality along with Sir Toby, Aguecheek and Malvolio … we have been dismissed to a world beyond holiday, where “the rain it raineth every day.” 47
Barton’s production effectively used the sound of the sea to bring in what Matthew Arnold in his great Victorian poem of loss, “Dover Beach,” called “the eternal note of sadness”:
The audience takes its seats to find Richard Pasco’s Orsino listening to his musicians. Presently an aural disturbance comes upon the music. It grows louder, and is identified as the sound of the sea crashing upon the shore. 48
Thus Orsino’s longing for love is overlaid with the storm that heralds Viola’s arrival, prompting, through the use of sound, the idea that she will awaken him from romantic delusion to reality and true love. The sound recurred during Viola’s conversation with Orsino in Act 2 scene 4 and during her reunion with Sebastian. 49
Viola acts as a catalyst, a storm of honest emotion: “throughout the play, the sea still tosses its waves: there are moments when the setting reminded me of the tunnel of a dream, a journeying place of the mind.” 50
Critic Robert Speaight experienced a sense of “the howling of the gale outside the gilded cage of Orsino’s palace; reality at odds with romanticism.” 51 Even the comic characters were serious: “The knightly revels are sad too. Barrie Ingham’s Sir Andrew is a knight of woeful countenance”: 52
Most startling and persuasive of the group is Elizabeth Spriggs, Maria: no longer the usual bundle of fun, but a prim Edinburghhousekeeper in gold rimmed spectacles, besotted with Sir Toby and only mounting the Malvolio intrigue with the purpose of luring him into marriage … the essence of the reading appears after the carousel scene where she steals back hoping to catch Sir Toby alone, only to be packed off blubbering by the selfish old brute (“It is too late to go to bed”) … Malvolio: the agent of so much fear in the household, and finally
Twelfth Night
has to make decisions about whether his or her production will attempt to balance the elements of light and dark in the play, or to go to one extreme or the other. Productions by the RSC demonstrate a wide variety of approaches, and the difficulty in succeeding with this emotionally complex play is shown in its reviews. Directors have invariably been criticized for omitting comedy, neglecting depth of emotion, or failing to find a balance between the two.
From the 1960s onward a definite shift took place in which the darker elements became the central focus—aspects such as the treatment of madness, sexuality, and the character of Feste were radically reexamined, altering the tone of the play:
Twelfth Night
is widely accepted as a supreme harmonizing of the romantic and the comic, sweet and the astringent. The admirable production, then, is held to be one which holds these elements in balance. It is in the inflection which a production gives to
Twelfth Night
that the special interest lies. And this inflection has undoubtedly modulated in recent years. Broadly, and crudely:
Twelfth Night
used to be funny, and is now much less so. What has happened? 44
John Barton’s 1969 staging is widely considered a landmark production because it was markedly different in tone from previous productions. His exploration of the psychological complexity of the characters created for one critic “the most austere
Twelfth Night
I have seen”; 45 for another it was suffused with “a kind of wintry melancholy.” 46 The program notes pointed to this darker reading:
For some characters [Orsino, Viola, Olivia, and Sebastian] … holiday perpetuates itself … The other characters of the comedy, by contrast, are exiled into reality. For most of them, holiday is paid for in ways that have real life consequences … None of these characters can be absorbed into the harmony of the romantic plot. For the rest of us … the play is done and we return to normality along with Sir Toby, Aguecheek and Malvolio … we have been dismissed to a world beyond holiday, where “the rain it raineth every day.” 47
Barton’s production effectively used the sound of the sea to bring in what Matthew Arnold in his great Victorian poem of loss, “Dover Beach,” called “the eternal note of sadness”:
The audience takes its seats to find Richard Pasco’s Orsino listening to his musicians. Presently an aural disturbance comes upon the music. It grows louder, and is identified as the sound of the sea crashing upon the shore. 48
Thus Orsino’s longing for love is overlaid with the storm that heralds Viola’s arrival, prompting, through the use of sound, the idea that she will awaken him from romantic delusion to reality and true love. The sound recurred during Viola’s conversation with Orsino in Act 2 scene 4 and during her reunion with Sebastian. 49
Viola acts as a catalyst, a storm of honest emotion: “throughout the play, the sea still tosses its waves: there are moments when the setting reminded me of the tunnel of a dream, a journeying place of the mind.” 50
Critic Robert Speaight experienced a sense of “the howling of the gale outside the gilded cage of Orsino’s palace; reality at odds with romanticism.” 51 Even the comic characters were serious: “The knightly revels are sad too. Barrie Ingham’s Sir Andrew is a knight of woeful countenance”: 52
Most startling and persuasive of the group is Elizabeth Spriggs, Maria: no longer the usual bundle of fun, but a prim Edinburghhousekeeper in gold rimmed spectacles, besotted with Sir Toby and only mounting the Malvolio intrigue with the purpose of luring him into marriage … the essence of the reading appears after the carousel scene where she steals back hoping to catch Sir Toby alone, only to be packed off blubbering by the selfish old brute (“It is too late to go to bed”) … Malvolio: the agent of so much fear in the household, and finally
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