Title: Twelfth Night
Author: William Shakespeare
Pages: 200?
Finished: September 12, 2020
First Sentence: If music be the food of love, play on.
Summary: Viola, saved from a shipwreck, disguises herself as a man to serve Count Orsino. As a man, she becomes Orsino's messenger to the fair Olivia, who in turn falls for Viola/Cesario. Viola, of course, has fallen in love with Orsino.
Thoughts: My only experience with this play was actually through an Amanda Bynes movie called She's the Man from when I was a teenager. So how did reading the play live up?
Do you ever read classics and think, "Huh... English teachers held these to some really high standards, but this is really a bawdy joke that I'd get in trouble if I made it in class in modern terms?" That's how I feel when I read Shakespeare. It's held high as this lofty thing, but it was meant for the masses. That's not to say it's bad, just not the high-brow literature we're led to believe.
Once you get through the Elizabethan language, the plot itself is fairly simplistic. I specifically picked teh Folger Shakespeare edition for the notes I know they add in, but found myself skipping over them once I got into the rhythm of the language.
In terms of the storyline... meh. It takes a long time to set up, and then the end could have been resolved at least one act earlier if people had communicated rather than talked. I suppose that's part of the comedy though.
Having not seen numerous movie version of this (the way I have with Much Ado About Nothing), I felt I didn't appreciate it as much as I could. As this is a play, it's meant to be a visual medium. Without that, I do feel like I'm missing quite a bit. I think, in general, I appreciate Shakespeare better when I've seen either a production or a movie version to go along with it.
That being said, glad I read it and I'm happy to cross another book off my Classic Club list. I believe this counts for a ton of challenges, but at this point, I've basically decided I'm not even attempting to finish them with how my reading tastes have just completely diverged from what I was reading at the beginning of the year.
Having not seen numerous movie version of this (the way I have with Much Ado About Nothing), I felt I didn't appreciate it as much as I could. As this is a play, it's meant to be a visual medium. Without that, I do feel like I'm missing quite a bit. I think, in general, I appreciate Shakespeare better when I've seen either a production or a movie version to go along with it.
That being said, glad I read it and I'm happy to cross another book off my Classic Club list. I believe this counts for a ton of challenges, but at this point, I've basically decided I'm not even attempting to finish them with how my reading tastes have just completely diverged from what I was reading at the beginning of the year.
This is one of the first Shakespeare plays I ever saw. I was eight a the time, and the version we saw onstage was so funny. I loved it. But when I read it several years ago as an adult, it lost a lot of its charm for me. Shakespeare is definitely best when performed live. :)
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