When it comes to Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night--other than the title and the use of role reversal, there’s seemingly very little to suggest Shakespeare’s play is anything but another comedy. In fact, modern stagings have often found it difficult to revive the play as a holiday feature due precisely to its’ lack of holiday content. However, when we explore the history of the holiday itself, and some of the political associations contained in the specific time in history when Shakespeare penned this play, we discover not only on how Shakespeare may have celebrated this iconic holiday, but on how the play Twelfth Night may be more of a Christmas production than we first realized.

Here to help us take a look behind the curtain and into the history of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, as well as to examine the common holiday traditions associated with the festival, is our guest François Laroque.

 

François Laroque is Emeritus Professor of English Literature and early modern drama at Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Festive World (CUP, 1991), and of Court, Crowd and Playhouse (Thames & Hudson, 1993). He has also co-edited a two-volume anthology of Elizabethan Theatre (Gallimard, Paris, 2009) and published translations of Marlowe’s and of Shakespeare’s plays. His last book is a Dictionnaire amoureux de Shakespeare (“In love with Shakespeare. A personal dictionary”), Paris, Plon, 2016.

Dr. Laroque joins us today to take us behind the curtain and into Shakespeare’s celebration of the popular 16-17th century holiday, Twelfth Night to look specifically at how an understanding of the holiday celebrations could make the play more of a festive performance than it is typically given credit.