This volume in the Shakespeare Criticism series offers a range of approaches to Twelfth Night, including its critical reception, performance history, and relation to early modern culture.

James Schiffer’s extensive introduction surveys the play’s critical reception and performance history, while individual essays explore a variety of topics relevant to a full appreciation of the play: early modern notions of love, friendship, sexuality, madness, festive ritual, exoticism, social mobility, and detection. The contributors approach these topics from a variety of perspectives, such as new critical, new historicist, cultural materialist, feminist and queer theory, and performance criticism, occasionally combining several approaches within a single essay.

The new essays from leading figures in the field explore and extend the key debates surrounding Twelfth Night, creating the ideal book for readers approaching this text for the first time or wishing to further their knowledge of this stimulating, much loved play.

James Schiffer is Professor of English and former Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the State University of New York at New Paltz, USA.