“And what should I do in Illyria?” The literary setting of Twelfth Night Elizabeth Pentland, York University

Twelfth Night

Viola: What country, friends, is this?

Captain: This is Illyria, lady.

Viola: And what should I do in Illyria?

My brother he is in Elysium.

Perchance he is not drowned. What think you, sailors?

(1.2.1-4)

Twelfth Night

  Romantic comedy written by Shakespeare around the turn of the 17th century.

  First recorded performance is in 1602 at the Inns of Court.

  Shakespeare has been writing plays for about 10 years.

  Looking for good stories with wide popular appeal.

A source for Twelfth Night

  Shakespeare’s main source for the play was a novella by Barnabe Riche called Apolonius and Silla, published in a collection called Riche His Farewell to Military Profession (publ. 1581).

  English version of a story popular across Europe, that circulated in many forms, including other plays and novellas.

  A story designed to appeal to women, especially?

Popular reading in Shakespeare’s time…

An exotic setting for Apolonius and Silla

Other sources for Twelfth Night

  Riche’s version of the story is set in Cyprus and Constantinople, but other versions of the story also circulated, each of them slightly different.

  One of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, Sir John Manningham, saw Twelfth Night in 1602 and noted its similarity to Shakespeare’s own Comedy of Errors, to the Roman playwright Plautus’s Menaechmi, and most of all to an Italian comedy called L’Inganni.

  The French writer, François de Belleforest, also included a version of this story in his series called Les Histoires Tragiques. His was closely based on a novella by the Italian writer Matteo Bandello.

Plautus’s Menaechmi

Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors

The World of Greek Romance

  These versions of the story have something in common: an ancient Greek setting.

  Plautus was a Roman playwright working in the late 3rd and early 2nd centuries BCE; Shakespeare would have read him as a schoolboy in Stratford-Upon-Avon.

  The Comedy of Errors is set in a time period that is hard to pinpoint (more medieval than classical).

  This is both the world of Roman comedy and that of Greek “romance” (long prose or verse tales, stories of adventure, precursors to the modern novel).

The World of Greek Romance   Romances were very popular with readers in Shakespeare’s

time. Long, episodic stories, involving a series of adventures sometimes covering vast distances or taking place in exotic locales.

  Thought to be especially popular with women readers.

  Conventions included dramatic shipwrecks on distant shores, family members (sometimes twins) or lovers separated and later reunited, disguises, mistaken identities, a love or marriage plot. Typically, the protagonists are young men, often of noble or royal birth.

  Twelfth Night takes up many of these conventions: Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, adopts a disguise, is embroiled in a love triangle, is reunited with her lost brother (but only after they are mistaken for one another), etc.

“Une fille Romaine…”

The novellas   Another version of the story comes in the form of a novella

by Matteo Bandello (and its French translation by Francois de Belleforest). Bandello’s stories were extremely popular; many were also translated into English.

  Their story (Belleforest titles it “Une fille Romaine…), about the daughter of a Roman merchant, is set in Italy around the time of the sack of Rome (1527). This version is much closer (in terms of the love plot) to Riche’s Apolonius and Silla.

  But Shakespeare seems to have wanted to dissociate this story from Rome (ancient or modern), and to give his comedy a different sort of setting—one that would resonate more positively with his audiences.

Twelfth Night Shakespeare put his own spin on the story by moving the setting to the coast of Illyria.

“…that little known coast”

  Shakespeare has a reputation for “inventive” geography.

  In her recent novel, The Gap of Time, Jeanette Winterson tells us that the play it’s based on (The Winter’s Tale) “opens in Sicilia—one of Shakespeare’s many fantasy islands” (3).

  She also claims that the time in which it is set is “invented” (3).

  Likewise, there is a long tradition, among critics, of thinking about Shakespeare’s Illyria, the setting for Twelfth Night, as a “mythical” or invented place.

  Alternately, some have suggested that it “resembles the rural England of landed gentry and country mansions far more than it does any Mediterranean court society” (cf. Elam 1996).

Twelfth Night’s setting: Illyria

Pannonia and Illyria

Illyria (or in Latin, Illyricum)

An in-between place…   Shakespeare’s Illyria stands between Italy and the Ottoman

Empire.

  A cultural cross-roads, Ragusa (now called Dubrovnik) was a rich mercantile city, known to traders, travelers, and diplomats.

  European pilgrims heading to the Holy Land often traveled by ship along this coast.

  Region is known for sudden storms, shipwrecks, and notorious for its pirates. Shakespeare alludes to “Bargulus the strong Illyrian pirate” in 2 Henry 6, and to “Ragozine, a most notorious pirate” in Measure for Measure.

  One of Bandello’s stories describes how men here are especially susceptible to beauty, fall in love easily and with great passion, sometimes forgetting themselves or behaving foolishly (as Malvolio does when he fantasizes about Olivia).

Twelfth Night

Ancient Illyria   The place name “Illyria” is actually a clue for Shakespeare’s

audiences. It’s the ancient Greek name for the region—not the every day name used by Shakespeare’s contemporaries.

  Shakespeare uses it to link his story to the “ancient” world of Greek romance.

  But Illyria also had a particular reputation in the ancient world that may have interested Shakespeare. Like Renaissance England, it was, at one time ruled by a fiercely independent queen (Teuta).

Teuta had a strong fleet of ships, which she used to raid neighbouring colonies; she was known for defying the Romans (who sought to annex her territory).

Ancient Illyria   Today, the study of classical literature is no longer part of

everyone’s education, but in Shakespeare’s time, boys read and translated Latin in grammar school.

  They were familiar with the great Roman writers, including Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, but also historians like Livy.

  Writers in Shakespeare’s time were also producing English translations and “epitomes” of many important works.

Teuta, who reigned for three years, beginning in 231 BCE, was known principally through the works of Polybius, Pliny, Livy, Florus, and Appian of Alexandria.

  Discussed in Renaissance works on the “regiment of women.”

Twelfth Night   Shakespeare’s contemporaries

described Teuta as a model for their own queen (and a precedent for female rule).

  Her defiance of the Romans resonated with Elizabeth’s own defiance of Catholic Rome (and her defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588).

  Shakespeare’s Olivia is similarly independent-minded. Not willing to be ruled (or to marry, if it means giving up her autonomy)

Twelfth Night Like Elizabeth I, Olivia inherits her position (as Countess and head of household) after the deaths of her father and brother. (Teuta takes over the rule of Illyria after her husband dies). Shakespeare borrows his love plot from popular fictions of his day, but chooses his setting for the way it resonates with England’s own recent history.

The End.