Twelfth Night (Vol. 34) - Relation To Elizabethan Culture
RELATION TO ELIZABETHAN CULTURE
Charles Tyler Prouty (lecture date 1966)
SOURCE: "Twelfth Night," in Stratford Papers: 1965-67, edited by B. A. W. Jackson, McMaster University Library Press, 1969, pp. 110-28.
[In the following essay first delivered at the 1966 Shakespeare Seminar, Prouty positions Twelfth Night with regard to Shakespeare's source materials, focusing specifically on his interpretation of Renaissance notions of courtly love.]
In some thirty years of teaching it has been my experience that of all the plays in the Shakespeare canon the comedies are the most difficult to teach. The Joyous Comedies in particular require so much explanation that we are in danger of losing the play in establishing what I regard as the essential details. The reason is very simply that these are sophisticated plays based on a complex of social and literary conventions that were well known to the Renaissance world in general...
[The entire page is 13740 words long]
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