Twelfth Night; or What You Will

As the comedy opens, Viola wonders, "What is the name of this land?" The woman rescued from a shipwreck has been washed up on an unknown coast. Stranded and alone, she does not yet know what ground she set foot on. Here anything seems possible. There are no limits to love. Everyone enters into a relationship with everyone else. The atmosphere is one of wild desire and seduction, love frenzy and intoxicating activity. Although in the end no one gets the one they wanted at the beginning, there still is a grand celebration, as if this ludicrous trip, the playing with identities, self-reflections, disguises, confusions, aberrations and absurdity could have a happy ending. As if everyone didn't just love themselves - without ever having recognised themselves. Only the jester knows more. He watches the doings of the lost with scepticism: Viola, who disguised as a man searches for her twin brother and falls into Olivia's clutches, Orsino, the unhappy lover, or Malvolio, the enthusiasmer mocked by his cronies. Illyria is what William Shakespeare calls this land of frivolous drivenness, the setting for his "dark comedy". It is not by chance that the title is Twelfth Night; or What You Will. For in the twelve nights between Christmas and Epiphany, people celebrated debauched, carnival-like festivities against the horror and fears of winter's own darkness.