Twelfth Night

This edition of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night has been designed with the Indian undergraduate student in mind. The text is accompanied by full, clear notes, so that the student can easily make sense of the play. There is a comprehensive Introduction covering the play's title, date and sources, the figure of the Fool, the tradition of festivity and misrule on holidays like Twelfth Night and the contemporary Puritan and other attacks on plays and revels. The themes of gender and class that arise from the cross-dressing of the heroine and the gulling of Malvolio are also introduced as well as a brief outline of the play's theatrical history. A section on related background texts includes illustrative materials from Shakespeare's sonnets, Castiglione's Book of the Courtier, Philip Stubbes' and Stephen Gosson's attacks on the theatre, King James' Book of Sports and some of the period's debates on gender issues like Jane Anger Her Protection for Women and the Hic Mulier and Haec Vir pamphlets. Six critical essays cover the topics of festivity, same-sex relationships and cross-dressing, class, social mobility and madness, and the language of wooing in an age dominated by Petrarchan conventions. A full bibliography is also included.