Includes an overview of Shakespeare's theatrical career, commentary on past productions, and a scene-by-scene analysis accompany Shakespeare's play about unrequited love and mistaken identity.

"For this updated edition of Twelfth Night, Penny Gay has written a wholly new Introduction to this well-loved Shakespearean comedy. She stresses the play's theatricality, its elaborate linguistic games and its complex use of Ovidian myths. She analyses the play's delicate balance between romance and realism and its exploration of gender, sexuality and identity. In examining the stage history, Professor Gay suggests that contemporary critical theory...

Viola becomes furious when she learns that her high school, Cornwall, has just cut the girl's soccer team. So furious, in fact, that she takes advantage of her twin brother Sebastian skipping town for a few weeks to take his place at his school, Illyria, so she can join the soccer team there. But her disguise as her brother leads to major complications when she falls in love with her soccer-playing roommate and the girl he's in love with falls in...

"One of Shakespeare's best-loved comedies, Twelfth Night was 'blissfully reborn' (The Daily Telegraph) for the 2012/13 season at London's Globe Theatre, under the direction of Tim Carroll. The hilarious tale of misdirection and deception is performed here by an all-male cast, as it would have been in Shakespeare's day, with Mark Rylance playing Olivia and Roger Lloyd Pack as the hapless Sir Andrew Aguecheek. The production also marks Stephen Fry's...