50 Fun Facts About Twelfth Night

What name does shipwrecked Viola adopt when she disguises herself as a page to the Duke of Illyria?

Cesario is the page Olivia promptly falls for, and Viola keeps the disguise so long that her own twin is later mistaken for him.

Which character, in love with the idea of love, opens Twelfth Night with 'If music be the food of love, play on'?

Orsino is a melancholy lover in love with the idea of love, and he ends the play engaged to the page he had been sending to woo somebody else.

Sir Toby Belch asks Malvolio whether, because he is virtuous, there shall be no more of what?

Cakes and ale is Sir Toby's retort in Act II, Scene 3, and it makes him the play's spokesman for revelry against the steward's killjoy rule.

The forged letter Malvolio reads says some are born great, some achieve greatness; how do the rest get it?

Greatness 'thrust upon them' is the line everyone credits to Malvolio, yet he is only reading aloud words a waiting-woman forged in Olivia's hand.

In English Twelfth Night cake tradition a bean made its finder king; what hidden token made a woman queen?

A pea crowned the queen while the bean crowned the king, and Robert Herrick's 1648 poem has both toasted with bowls of 'lamb's-wool', a spiced ale.

Which 1998 Best Picture winner ends with an order to write 'something more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night'?

Shakespeare in Love closes with Elizabeth I commissioning a comedy for the holiday, and its final image is a woman named Viola, disguised as a man, arriving in a strange land.

For how many years does Olivia vow to veil her face in mourning for her brother in Twelfth Night?

Seven years of refusing all suitors is Olivia's vow, and she abandons it almost at once for the Duke's disguised messenger.

Counting Christmas Day as the first of the Twelve Days, the Church of England keeps Twelfth Night on which date?

5 January is Epiphany Eve, and churches that begin counting on 26 December land the festival a day later, on the evening of Epiphany itself.

Who forges the love letter in Olivia's handwriting that tricks the steward Malvolio into wooing his own mistress?

Maria, Olivia's waiting-gentlewoman, plots the letter to punish Malvolio for breaking up a late-night party, and ends the play married to Sir Toby.

Which foolish knight, a rival suitor to Olivia, is goaded into a duel with Viola in her page disguise?

Sir Andrew Aguecheek is being bled of his money by Sir Toby, who stages the duel knowing that neither the knight nor the terrified 'page' can fight.

Which fool attached to Olivia's household sings 'O Mistress Mine' and 'Come Away, Death' in Twelfth Night?

Feste is named only once in the whole play, when the Duke asks who sang to him the night before, and he moonlights entertaining at the Duke's house too.

Under which curate's name does Olivia's fool torment the imprisoned Malvolio in Twelfth Night?

Sir Topas is a voice the fool puts on at the cell door, insisting Malvolio is mad whatever he says and demanding he accept Pythagoras's doctrine of reincarnation.

Which sea captain, an old enemy of the Duke, rescues Sebastian and follows him into hostile Illyria?

Antonio's devotion gets him arrested by the Duke's officers when he interrupts a duel, mistaking the disguised Viola for the twin he saved.

Which token from Olivia, carried by her steward, tells the disguised Viola that the countess has fallen for her?

A ring is the pretext, and Viola's soliloquy on it admits that only time can untangle a knot too hard for her to untie.

Twelfth Night calls Malvolio 'a kind of' what, the sect that fought Epiphany revels in Shakespeare's day?

Puritan killjoys really did fight Epiphany celebrations, and some scholars think Malvolio was modelled on Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby, a litigious Yorkshire landowner.

Malvolio's name, apt for Twelfth Night's sour steward, comes from the Italian for what?

Ill will is what the Italian 'mal volio' spells out, and the steward lives up to it as the vain, pompous and authoritarian head of Olivia's household.

Where is Malvolio confined, in the period's usual cure for madness, after following the letter's absurd orders?

A dark room was the Elizabethan cure for lunacy, and the fool visits the prisoner there both as himself and in the voice of a curate.

When Olivia asks the disguised Viola 'Are you a comedian?', what does the Elizabethan word mean?

An actor is what 'comedian' meant, one of several moments where Twelfth Night winks at the audience about its own play-acting.

Which inn, sharing its name with a pub near the Globe, does Sebastian's rescuer call the best lodging in Illyria?

The Elephant was a real pub not far from the Globe Theatre, one of several London in-jokes tucked into Shakespeare's supposedly Illyrian setting.

From which city do the twins Viola and Sebastian hail, the home Viola names when she is reunited with her brother?

Messaline is the answer Viola gives when Sebastian asks her parentage in the final scene; he had earlier told Antonio he was 'that Sebastian of Messaline'.

Before settling on a page's role, Viola first asks the sea captain to present her to the Duke as what?

A eunuch is Viola's first plan for getting into the Duke's service, an idea the play quietly drops once she appears at court as a young page.

Illyria, where Twelfth Night is set, was a real ancient region on the eastern shore of which sea?

Adriatic Illyria covered today's Albania and Montenegro and became a Roman province, yet the play fills it with London in-jokes.

Elizabethan Twelfth Night revels were run by which temporary master who called for songs and mummery?

The Lord of Misrule presided over licensed disorder, and the play is often read as preserving that topsy-turvy mood, with a steward humbled and a servant wed to a knight.

Law student John Manningham saw the first recorded Twelfth Night at a feast in the hall of which Inn of Court?

Middle Temple Hall still stands, and Shakespeare's Globe restaged the play there in 2002 to mark the premiere's 400th anniversary, exactly where law students had watched it.

Twelfth Night leans on Gl'ingannati, a 1531 comedy written collectively by an academy in which Italian city?

Siena's Accademia degli Intronati wrote 'The Deceived Ones' as a group, and the diarist who saw the 1602 premiere already spotted its likeness to the 'Inganni' plays.

Whose 1581 'Farewell to Military Profession' supplied Twelfth Night's source tale 'Of Apollonius and Silla'?

Barnabe Rich claimed the story as his own invention, though it actually descends from a tale by Matteo Bandello, the Italian who also fed Romeo and Juliet.

Which palace held Elizabeth I's Twelfth Night revels of 1601, for which some scholars say the play was commissioned?

Whitehall's guest that night was Virginio Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, and sceptics reply that court etiquette would never let a comedy name its lead after the visitor.

After Malvolio storms off swearing revenge on the whole pack of them, whom does the Duke send to placate him?

Fabian also confesses the whole plot against the steward in the final scene, revealing that Sir Toby has married the letter's forger.

Which gathering of bishops in AD 567 declared the days from Christmas to Epiphany one festive season?

The Council of Tours also fixed Advent fasting, and one theory says the twelve-day span helped Rome reconcile its solar calendar with its eastern provinces' lunar ones.

Which London theatre has served its company a Twelfth Night cake since 1795, paid for by Robert Baddeley's will?

Drury Lane's Theatre Royal has kept up Baddeley's £100 bequest for more than 200 years, the money invested to buy cake and punch for the resident company every 6 January.

Which James Joyce story, the long finale of Dubliners, opens at a party on Twelfth Night?

The Dead stretches into the small hours of Epiphany itself, ending with Gabriel gazing at falling snow after a revelation from his wife Gretta.

Who directed the 1996 film of Twelfth Night, set in the 19th century with Imogen Stubbs as Viola?

Trevor Nunn shot it in Cornwall, at Padstow and Lanhydrock House, with the Duke's men in uniforms evoking the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Which star of Gandhi plays the fool who narrates the shipwreck at the start of the 1996 Twelfth Night film?

Ben Kingsley's fool is kept in view through the scenes that reveal the plot, a choice that plays up hints he knows more about Viola's disguise than he admits.

Which Globe artistic director played Olivia in an all-male Twelfth Night that won him a 2014 Tony Award?

Mark Rylance's Olivia ran on Broadway in repertory with his Richard III, earning him nominations in two acting categories the same year, a feat only six have managed.

Which QI host returned to the stage as Malvolio at Shakespeare's Globe in 2012, later transferring to Broadway?

Stephen Fry earned a 2014 Tony nomination for the Broadway run, his second after adapting Me and My Girl in 1987, and the production ran alongside Richard III.

Who played the gender-flipped steward 'Malvolia' in the National Theatre's 2017 Twelfth Night?

Tamsin Greig's Malvolia was one of several roles the production switched to women, along with the fool and a servant renamed Fabia.

Which Oscar winner played Viola at Central Park's Delacorte Theater in 2009, with Audra McDonald as Olivia?

Anne Hathaway shares her name with Shakespeare's wife, and the staging was part of New York's Shakespeare in the Park summer season.

Who played the Duke in CBS Radio's 1937 Twelfth Night, then Malvolio a year later with his Mercury Theatre company?

Orson Welles was still four years from Citizen Kane, and his radio Duke was paired with Tallulah Bankhead's Viola.

Which Mad About You star played Viola at Lincoln Center in 1998, in a production broadcast live on PBS?

Helen Hunt's Viola shared Nicholas Hytner's stage with Paul Rudd as the Duke and Kyra Sedgwick as Olivia, the same year she won her Oscar for As Good as It Gets.

Which Doctor Who star voiced Malvolio in BBC Radio 3's April 2012 production of Twelfth Night?

David Tennant played the steward for radio with Paul Ready as the Duke, in a version directed by Sally Avens.

Which Bend It Like Beckham lead played Viola in a 2003 Channel 4 Twelfth Night with Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Duke?

Parminder Nagra's multicultural Twelfth Night was one of two Shakespeare updates she made for Channel 4, the other a King Lear reworked as Second Generation.

Sebastian's girlfriend Monique in She's the Man gets which surname, taken from one of the Duke's attendants in the play?

Valentine is one of three surname nods in the film, alongside the meddling Malcolm 'Festes' and Viola's stylist Paul, who gets the name of Sebastian's loyal sea captain.

'Come Away, Come Away, Death' from Twelfth Night was set in 1860 by which German composer for female choir?

Johannes Brahms used August Schlegel's German translation, and later settings came from Finzi, Korngold, Quilter and Sibelius, the last in Swedish.

Which future Oscar winner played Viola when the Old Vic reopened in 1950 after its Blitz damage?

Peggy Ashcroft had already played Viola for television in 1939, when the BBC produced the entire play under Michel Saint-Denis.

Who played Malvolio opposite Ralph Richardson's Sir Toby when Lilian Baylis reopened Sadler's Wells in 1931?

John Gielgud's Malvolio reopened a long-dormant theatre, and the role has since drawn Ian Holm, Patrick Stewart, Derek Jacobi and Simon Russell Beale.

John Manningham's 1602 diary likened Twelfth Night to which earlier Shakespeare play and to Plautus's Menaechmi?

The Comedy of Errors was Shakespeare's own twin farce, and Manningham added that Twelfth Night was nearest of all to the Italian 'Inganni' plays.

In which year did the BBC air Twelfth Night as the first complete Shakespeare play broadcast on British radio?

1923's broadcast, on 28 May, had its adapter Cathleen Nesbitt voicing both Viola and her twin Sebastian.

Who played the mourning countess Olivia in the 1996 Twelfth Night film, opposite Toby Stephens as the Duke?

Helena Bonham Carter's Olivia has Nigel Hawthorne's Malvolio wooing her in a toupée he wears to look younger, before she has him committed.

Viola's cry of 'Westward ho!' in Twelfth Night borrowed the typical call of which 16th-century London workers?

Boatmen on the Thames used the cry, one of several London touches that slip into Shakespeare's Illyria alongside a real Bankside pub.

Which studio released the first screen Twelfth Night, a 1910 silent short starring Florence Turner?

Vitagraph's silent short starred Florence Turner alongside Julia Swayne Gordon and Marin Sais, 27 years before a 1937 BBC excerpt of the play became the first Shakespeare ever shown on television.