University of Virginia Library

'Twelfth Night'
On Many Levels

By Corbin Eissler
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

"Twelfth Night" is the last and
perhaps the best of Shakespeare's
romantic comedies. It is a love
story, but even more than that it is a
play of deceptions and disguises
used both outwardly as a plot and
comic device, and inwardly as
human self deception.

The Oxford and Cambridge
Shakespeare Company, sponsored
by The University. Union, will
present "Twelfth Night" in Cabell
Hall Auditorium tonight at 8:30.
Judging from reviews on the
production when it was given
elsewhere on the group's tour, the
show should be excellent.

Complex Montage

"Twelfth Night" is much more
than a simple comedy. It is a
montage of complex plots and
deceptions all held in a magic world
that is out of tune. Unlike most of
Shakespeare's comedies, though, the
whole world of Illyria is pervaded
with a sense of potential tragedy.
This gives the play additional depth
and appeal as Shakespeare worked to
develop a style of tragicomedy that
was to reach its culmination in
"The Tempest."

Director Jonathan Miller
approaches the play with a feel for
"the emblematic themes which
animated the renaissance imagination."
Mr. Miller notes that "the
play offers a perfect example of the
ironic use of metaphor. Arching
over all is the master image of
musical harmony."

Mr. Miller sees Illyria as "a social
keyboard untuned by the vagrancies
of human folly." He adds "just as
Lear had to go mad in order to gain
a superior form of moral sanity, so
Illyria must be turned upside down
before it can recover a harmony
which is modeled upon the permanent
order of heavenly decorum."

Comedy Also

But "Twelfth Night" is also a
comedy of "human temperaments."
The sub-plot of Malvolio
and Feste and Sir Toby Belch is a
broadly funny and pointed farce
while at the same time a purifying
agent and parody of the main
action. The play works on many
levels, and Mr. Miller does not
neglect the comic.

This apprehension of the play
seems to preview a production
which is capable of preserving some
of the most beautiful poetry
Shakespeare wrote, and its sweet
melancholy, while at the same time
freeing the chaotic sense of misrule
and farce.

Promised Success

Mr. Miller says of his emblematic
stance, "the structural elements
of ancient myth are still alive and
kicking. By acknowledging them we
can enjoy a stronger relationship
with the living body of the text."
With this view, and an extremely
talented acting company, how can
he miss? At least one can't blame
the playwright.