Audiobook · read by volunteers
Twelfth Night
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
Read by Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023), Gesine, John Gonzalez, Kristin Hughes (1974-2021), Rosalind Wills, Karen Savage, Andy Minter (1934-2017), Heather Barnett, Alan Davis Drake (1945-2010), Zachary Brewster-Geisz · 5 chapters · 2 h 24
About the book
On the coast of Illyria a ship is wrecked, and a young woman named Viola, believing her twin brother drowned, disguises herself as a boy and takes service with the lovesick Duke Orsino. Soon she is carrying his messages of love to the lady Olivia, who falls for the messenger instead. Meanwhile, in Olivia's household, a steward who thinks too well of himself becomes the target of a cruel prank by the knight Sir Toby and the maid Maria. Mistaken identities pile up, hearts are turned the wrong way round, and the arrival of a certain brother makes everything wonderfully worse. This full-cast LibriVox recording brings together ten volunteers, among them Kara Shallenberg and Gesine, across five acts and just under two and a half hours. It is a lively way to meet one of Shakespeare's most musical comedies.
Introduction
Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare (1564-1616). It was first printed in 1623 in the First Folio, the collected edition of his plays published after his death; the play itself was written some twenty years earlier. It takes its name from the festival that ended the Christmas season, a time when ordinary rules were turned upside down, and the play shares in that spirit of play and disguise.
The plot combines several strands. There is the romantic triangle of Orsino, Viola and Olivia, in which each loves someone who loves someone else. There is the low-comic world of Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek and the clown Feste. And there is the humbling of the steward Malvolio, a scene that is funny, and also, for many modern audiences, a little uncomfortable. The play ends with reunions and weddings, but its songs carry a bittersweet note.
This production has ten volunteer performers and five tracks, one per act, running about 2.4 hours. Several voices help keep the many characters easy to tell apart.
Why listen? The language is quick and witty, the situations still work, and a spoken performance catches the humour of the wordplay better than silent reading. The songs and the wordplay are best appreciated by ear, and the fast exchanges of the comic scenes work particularly well when several voices overlap in the rhythm of a real conversation. Anyone who has seen a stage production will enjoy noticing how much a good vocal performance alone can convey of character and mood.
Public domain
William Shakespeare died in 1616: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text