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Twelfth Night

1602

William Shakespeare

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Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare

1602

British Literature, Classics of Literature, Plays/Films/Dramas

What happens when the person you fall for is the person you're pretending to be? Viola washes ashore in Illyria after a shipwreck, believes her twin brother Sebastian dead, and to survive in this strange land, disguises herself as a man called Cesario. She becomes essential to Duke Orsino, who is pining for the unreachable Countess Olivia. But when Orsino sends Cesario to court Olivia on his behalf, Olivia forgets her vow of mourning and falls hard for the messenger instead. As the tangle of mistaken identities intensifies, everyone loves everyone, no one is who they seem, Shakespeare asks an unsettling question: is love about the person, or the performance? Beneath the wit and wordplay, Twelfth Night is genuinely dangerous, a comedy that interrogates gender, desire, and whether anyone can ever truly be known. It remains one of Shakespeare's most performed and most radical plays, four centuries later.

Project Gutenberg

A comedy written in the early 17th century. The play explores themes of love, identity, and the complexities of human re...

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“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.””

— William Shakespeare

“If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,That, notwithstanding thy capacityReceiveth as the sea, nought enters there,Of what validity and pitch soe'er,But falls into abatement and low price,Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancyThat it alone is high fantastical.””

— William Shakespeare

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Your fate awaits you. Accept it in body and spirit. To get used to the life you'll most likely be leading soon, get rid of your low-class trappings.””

— William Shakespeare

“Better a witty fool, than a foolish wit.””

— William Shakespeare

“Journeys end in lovers meeting, Every wise man's son doth know.””

— William Shakespeare

“a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief””

— William Shakespeare

“Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better.””

— William Shakespeare

“I say, there is no darknessbut ignorance; in which thou art more puzzled thanthe Egyptians in their fog.””

— William Shakespeare

“O time, thou must untangle this, not I.It is too hard a knot for me t'untie.””

— William Shakespeare

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