Meanwhile Olivia’s puritan steward Malvolio is baited with a forged letter into yellow stockings and ruin.
The consensus pick for the finest comedy: the love plot at its most bittersweet, the below-stairs plot at its funniest, and a closing song that lets melancholy back in the door. The Malvolio plot’s cruelty is the play’s deliberate shadow — comedy examining its own cost.
Which edition?
1Arden Shakespeare, Third Series
Ed. Keir Elam · Bloomsbury, 2008
Elam’s edition is encyclopedic on the play’s music, jokes, and melancholy alike.
2Oxford World’s Classics
Ed. Roger Warren & Stanley Wells · Oxford University Press, 1994
A performance-minded text from two editors who clearly love the play.
3The New Cambridge Shakespeare
Ed. Elizabeth Story Donno · Cambridge University Press
Trim and unfussy, with a fine ear for the comedy’s structure.
4Folger Shakespeare LibraryFirst read? Start here
Ed. Barbara Mowat & Paul Werstine · Simon & Schuster
The gateway comedy, glossed so the wordplay lands first time.
Twelfth Night on screen
1Twelfth Night (1996)
Film · dir. Trevor Nunn
2She's the Man (2006)
Film · dir. Andy Fickman · inspired by Twelfth Night
Reading Twelfth Night this year?
Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.