Hello. My name is David Glimp, and I'm an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Colorado Boulder. The goal of the present video is to provide a brief overview of Twelfth Night, to outline some of this course's major concerns and emphases, and to offer some suggestions to help you get as much as you possibly can out of this course. My colleague Kevin Rich, has asked the question, what kind of world did Shakespeare create in Twelfth Night? To begin answering that question, we can note that there are three main story lines that organize the action of the play. Twelfth Night's first plot can scarcely be said to be applied at all, though it provides the backstory in premise for many of the events that follow. The play's very first scene introduces us to Duke Orsino, who rules the land of Illyria and who is desperately in love with the lady Olivia. Because of the recent deaths of her father and brother, Olivia is independent and in charge of her own estate and affairs, and because she has decided to remain in mourning for seven years, Olivia refuses Orsino's advances, though her refusals only intensifies Orsino's desire. At the end of the play's first scene, the subplot is stuck and it's difficult to imagine this particular story going anywhere at all. The play's next scene introduces a new story centered on the twins, Viola and Sebastian. At the play's outset, the twins have been separated during a recent shipwreck. Both survived the accident though each thinks the other is dead. The arrival of the twins at separate times unsettles the world of Illyria and starts to complicate and in fact, jump-start the first plot. We first meet Viola, who cast upon the shores of Illyria, disguises herself as a young man and renames herself Cesario in order to enter the employee of Duke Orsino. Orsino quickly accepts Cesario into his household, and enlists the attractive and articulate young servant in the effort to woo Olivia. When Olivia meets Cesario, she ignores everything he has to say, but immediately falls in love with him. To add to the confusion and the emotional turmoil in the play, Viola also falls in love with Duke Orsino. Unbeknownst to Viola, Sebastian has been saved by Antonio, a sea captain and suspected pirate. Antonio and Sebastian also find their way into Illyria. Sebastian looks exactly like his twin sister, and the similarity leads to multiple instances of mistaken identity, adding even further to the chaos of the play and creating the occasion for the place resolution. Finally, we come to the third main story line. The subplot is focused on the servant Malvolio. Shakespeare peoples the world of Twelfth Night, with a number of delightful and hilarious minor characters, most prominently, a set of individuals who inhabit Olivia's household. At times, these characters take over the play and this is most especially the case with the face-off between Olivia steward Malvolio and her uncle, the wonderfully and aptly named Sir Toby Belch. Sir Toby spends his days and nights drinking, dancing, joking, and singing with his companion, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and occasionally Feste the clown. Sir Toby and his crew take offense when Malvolio attempts to shut down their party. In response to Malvolio's high handed efforts, Olivia's maid Maria concocts a practical joke that successfully tricks Malvolio into publicly humiliating himself by revealing his secret love for his employer, Olivia. This brief summary of the play already signals some of the primary concerns upon which we will focus in the lessons that follow. Though this course will cover a lot of ground and we'll look at the play from many different angles, what follows will emphasize four primary themes. First, a major concern of every comedy is the experience of desire and the effects of desire on those who fall in love and on those around them. As the brief summary suggests, Twelfth Night draws on an understanding of desires, that deeply unsettling emotional experience that leads people to act in unexpected and frequently ridiculous ways. Twelfth Night dramatizes the folly associated with love and also as with all of Shakespeare's comedies revels in the turmoil love creates. The world depicted in this play is characterized by a collective madness that grows ever more chaotic as the play progresses. Second, building on the theme of desire, the play's chaos both creates and feeds off of conflict. This aspect of Twelfth Night is most obviously evident in the Malvolio sod plot. Now Volio sense of propriety in his attempt to enforce order in Olivia's household leads to a confrontation with Sir Toby that highlights the class differences between them. As the multiple plot lines intersect and interact, other conflicts arise and as the play gets funnier, it also gets more conflictual, and eventually, more violent. Such conflict and such violence shows Shakespeare thinking about some of the basic antagonisms that define his social world. Third, by studying desire and conflict in the play, we will be able to understand both how Shakespeare engages the conventions of comedy and how he presses against and in some ways undermines those conventions. With Twelfth Night, Shakespeare delivers one of his finest comedies, but in his awareness of the unsettling nature of desire and in his dramatization of social conflicts, he also questions the extent to which the quasi-magical resolutions of comedy can fully alleviate and neutralize the sources of antagonisms between people. Finally, we will briefly explore a case study of how Twelfth Night has been reinterpreted and repurposed by the Colorado Shakespeare festivals, Shakespeare in the schools project. This course's final module will examine how Malvolio's story offers a platform for conversation relevant to our own day about communities and violence. Before we get going, here's some advice about how to get the most out of this course. Each of the following modules will be key to specific acts of a play and we ask that you read the relevant acts before beginning each section of the course. We also recommend a preliminary first reading of the play while working through this initial module. Shakespeare's works, as with all great literature, reward repeated reading. Each time you read Twelfth Night, you will achieve a greater degree of comprehension. You will discover new things about the play, new dimensions of individual characters, new aspects of how Shakespeare weaves together his multiple plotlines, new resonances of his language, and a new appreciation for the subtleness of his insights into people and collective life. Reading the play once during the first module and then rereading the relevant acts a little play before your work through each subsequent section will enrich immensely your experience in this course. You will find at the end of this module a set of recommended additions of the play, including links to an online version you can access for free. Now, because Shakespeare's plays originally were written for performance, we also highly recommend that you watch a version of the play. Assuming that most people won't be able to attend a performance of Twelfth Night in person, we also provided this module's conclusion, a list of film versions of the play. Every performance of a play is an interpretation of that play. Watching a version of Twelfth Night after having first read it will help you become aware of some of the interpretive challenges the play presents and will alert you to some of the creative possibilities that reside in Shakespeare's script. Now, let's get started exploring Twelfth Night. In the next video, Kevin will introduce our first two interviews.
