Twelfth Night (Vol. 34) | Richard Henze (essay date 1975)
Richard Henze (essay date 1975)
SOURCE: "Twelfth Night: Free Disposition on the Sea of Love," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 2, Spring, 1975, pp. 267-83.
[In this essay, Henze claims that the variety of seemingly contradictory interpretations of Twelfth Night result from Shakespeare's attempt to portray a "sea " of interacting opposites and their reconciliation.]
Critical interpretations of Twelfth Night are notable for the variety of contradictory meanings that their makers attach to the play. The play has been called, among other things, a vindication of romance, a depreciation of romance, a realistic comment on economic security and practical marriage, an account of saturnalian festivity, a "subtle portrayal of the psychology of love," a play about "unrequital in love" because of self-deception, an account of love's wealth, a dramatic account of Epiphany and the gift of Divine Love, a moral comedy about...
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