Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
"If music be the food of love, play on."
Twelfth Night is our follow-up Shakespeare play after completing Macbeth. We would usually begin right after - or close to right after Winter Break. On the three days that students come back - before we began this play - the students would work on The Once and Future King - a book that was assigned as a long-term reading at the beginning of the year, but that most students began and finished during the Winter Break. Twelfth Night is studied as a prelude to a short unit on Literary Criticism. That is one of the reasons for choosing this play - there is SO much literary criticism (of all sorts) on this play - feminist, Marxist, New Historicism and much more. I will be posting that unit when this one has been completed.
In the old days (the first 10 years or so of my career) I used to teach three Shakespeare Plays in British Literature. A Tragedy (Macbeth), a Comedy (The Tempest), and a History (Henry IV, Part 1). About the same time that I dropped the third play - I changed The Tempest to Twelfth Night. It was a trade-off that had a cost. While Twelfth Night may be richer in Literary Criticism fodder - it does lose some social ideas to talk about such as slavery, colonization, and also feminism. I will say how however, that the students really reacted more positively (and laughed a lot harder) at Twelfth Night. By now, the the students are confident in their Shakespeare - they are practicing their Macbeth Play scenes - and they've come to understand an entire play mainly through their own reading, questions, and discussion.
We go through Twelfth Night a lot faster than we did Macbeth -gone are the language exercises, most of the "up on your feet" activities (though we still have some), and the ancillary materials that surrounded Macbeth (and that served to get students to understand and appreciate not only that play - but Shakespeare in general). I also used a lot more of the small group readings (as opposed to the whole class) as it gave students a chance to 1) practice reading lines (their Macbeth scenes they are performing are coming up) 2) ask and answer questions more (how great is this after just doing an entire Shakespeare play.
Of course - one of the coolest things is that we begin studying the play right on or darn close to the Twelfth Night (twelfth night of Christmas - The Epiphany). And so what better way to begin than with a Twelfth Night Party!
How fortuitous to be doing this play right around the time that it (or at least the title) takes place: Twelfth Night - aka the Twelfth Day of Christmas or the Feast of the Epiphany. There are two major parts to today's lesson - first, the students perform skits which they will make up on the spot (well - they have 5 minutes to plan it out); the next part is the Acting Circle where the students will read a scene from Twelfth Night cold (sight unseen) - first looking at the words - then what is being said - and finally they will get up an act it out with the entire class being the (now) well-informed directors.
This is the THIRD volume in the series and it has lessons for Twelfth Night and Othello. Here is the description from Amazon: "This volume of the Shakespeare Set Free series is written by institute faculty and participants, and includes the latest developments in recent scholarship. It bristles with the energy created by teaching and learning Shakespeare from the text and through active performance, and reflects the experience, wisdom, and wit of real classroom teachers in schools and colleges throughout the United States. "
Here is the description from Amazon: The authoritative edition of Twelfth Night from The Folger Shakespeare Library, the trusted and widely used Shakespeare series for students and general readers, includes:-Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play, Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play, Scene-by-scene plot summaries, A key to the play’s famous lines and phrases, An introduction to reading Shakespeare’s language, An essay by a leading Shakespeare scholar providing a modern perspective on the play, Fresh images from the Folger Shakespeare Library’s vast holdings of rare books, An annotated guide to further reading, Essay by Catherine Belsey
Macbeth - Folger Edition - Text Only
The Folger Library has an online edition of the play without the annotations - Shakespeare words (what appears on the right hand page in the paperback edition. It also includes in this online edition the very useful synopses that appear before each scene.
In addition to the "on your feet activities" that we will do while studying Macbeth - we will also read (and sometimes act out) the entire play (skipping just a few lines [the ones that Shakespeare probably didn't even write). I have created a separate page on this website for How to Read Plays in your Classroom. To summarize - every student will read. I start at the first student in the class - the first row - and that student will read for the first character in that scene - the next student will read for the next character and so on. The student "owns" that character for an entire page - reading until the next page. If a line continues over to the next page - the student finishes those lines before the next student picks up that character. On the Reading Plays Aloud in Class page there are diagrams and examples.
I truly believe it is imperative to have all of the students read the text aloud (again see the page on Reading Plays Aloud). It's fine if they're not polished - it's fine if they mispronounce words - it is a much more active endeavor when they are doing the reading and it also keeps them on their toes - they don't want to miss their entrance... Especially when we get to enjambed lines!