Twelfth Night starts at 16:50

Agreed 12th Night  is not overtly political, but it is the best Rom-Com in the canon. The key to writing a great Rom-Com is understanding that it's hysterically funny to the audience but pretty darn serious to the protagonists. There are also important themes of deconstruction that WS touches on but Prof. Cantor eschews.

Deep, so deep, layer upon layer pealed away until we drown within our own shallowness.  Not just words, words, words….. I’ll find my way blind, most feelingly. The rest is silence. ❤️🙏

At 44:20 Professor Cantor remarks with surprise that  Cesario asks which "exquisite and unmatchable beauty" is the lady of the house: "... You can pick her out in a crowd!" (44:36).   He asks because Olivia is veiled. See right before Cesario's entrance:
"Give me my veil: come, throw it o'er my face.
We'll once more hear Orsino's embassy."
It is still ironic that Cesario addresses Olivia as exquisitely beautiful while she is veiled and he as no evidence of his own to verify the claim that she is so gorgeous. It suggests a degree of shallowness and presumption.

I didn't know the Roundheads closed the theatres. Shakespeare's treatment of Malvolio makes so much sense in this context.

1:02:38 The Real politics of the play. Malvolio the Puritan.

One of my top 39 all-time favorite Shakespeare plays

A revelation.

thank you so much for uploading these lectures!! I wouldn't appreciate Shakespeare as much as I do now if I hadn't watched these videos!!

The Royal Shakespeare’s production with an all male cast is amazing.

Many thanks 🌺

Thank you!!

Twelfth night one of my favourite plays from shakespear. Thank you sir.

Thanks

Not every author is aware of all the problems that his character is aware of.

The production of Twelfth Night that Professor Cantor references with Alec Guinness is not only heavily cut but flawed in several ways. Guinness and Ralph Richardson are good as Malvolio and Toby Belch respectively, but Joan Plowright, although also a fine actress, I thought never really convinced as a boy. It is hard to imagine anyone being fooled by her Cesario for a minute. Worst of all was Feste, played by Tommy Steele. Steele was a middle-grade pop singer of the 1960s who turned to acting later in his career. He has the voice to portray Feste in his troubadour moments, but give him Shakespearian dialogue to handle and the result is an embarrassment.

44:50 - "...anyone could pick her out of a crowd."  But Olivia is VEILED, (I.v.150) so Cesario cannot see her beauty. Surely, Viola already knows who it is through other clues (dress, veil, the fact that servant Maria brings her into room where elegantly dressed woman in black is wating etc.)

"Ah...ah...ah...ah" 😢

I want to know about courtly love and its relation with Shakespearean play twelfth night which is a comedy.

I read Ben Johnson's play Volpone in college and thought it was ver good. Isnt that his greatest play?