Jul 25, 2008

Twelfth Night | Themes

The essential spirit of Twelfth Night is captured in its title. It refers to the "Twelfth Night" of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany celebrating the gift of the Magi to the infant Jesus. Believed by the Elizabethans to also be the day of Jesus' baptism, the Twelfth Night was an even more important holiday in Shakespeare's time than Christmas itself. In (partial) contrast to our own domesticated Christmas, this was not only a festive season for the Elizabethans but a time when excess and license were expected to run rampant. It was a time of merry-making, of hard...