This kicks off the daunting challenge I undertook this year to read Shakespeare. While the hosted project will include Shakespeare's sonnets, I am only going to do the plays.
Twelfth Night happens to be one of my favorite plays, not only because it is my birthday (January 6), but also because I think it is a cleverly constructed comic play of mistaken identities. This is one that not only have I read before, but I was fortunate enough to see it performed by the Globe Theater players when they toured the U.S. They performed the play in traditional Shakespeare fashion with the men assuming ALL the roles, male and female alike.
I find with much of Shakespeare that I miss ALOT of the word play and nuances simply reading the plays (even though I do read them aloud much to the chagrin of my dog). They are written with little stage direction so producers of his plays have quite a bit of leeway and through the actors' inflections, facial expressions and such I feel you can understand so much more - as Shakespeare truly intended.
What I had not remembered from prior readings and play attendance was that Shakespeare coined the following phrase in this play:
"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them."
While there were many parts of the play I enjoyed, it was this by the Clown, Feste that I appreciated for its insight into human nature:
"...the better for my foes and the worse for my friends....they [friends] praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir I profit in the knowledge of my self, and by my friends, I am abused..."
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