98 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 spends the play sending a page to court a countess for him, then ends it engaged to that page once she is revealed as a woman.

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

Cakes and ale is Sir Toby's jab at the steward who breaks up his late-night party, and Somerset Maugham took the phrase as the title of a 1930 novel.

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

Thrust upon them is often quoted as Malvolio's own wisdom, yet he is only reading aloud a letter forged to make a fool of him.

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 the whole party toast the pair from a bowl of 'lamb's-wool'.

Who won an Oscar as the queen who orders 'something more cheerful next time, for Twelfth Night' in Shakespeare in Love?

Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress as Elizabeth I, and joked in her speech that for eight minutes on screen she should only get a little bit of the statuette.

Olivia vows in Twelfth Night to mourn for seven years, walking veiled 'like a cloistress', an old word for what?

Nun is the meaning of 'cloistress', and Olivia drops the vow almost at once, falling 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 outside the prisoner's 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.

In Twelfth Night, Olivia's stern steward Malvolio is described as 'a kind of' what?

Puritan is a fellow servant's label for him, and one reveller says he would beat the steward like a dog for it before the speaker takes it back, calling him only a time-pleaser.

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

Ill will is the meaning, and Shakespeare had already used its opposite: Benvolio, 'good will', is the peacemaker of an earlier tragedy.

Where is Malvolio confined, in a common treatment for madness at the time, after following the letter's absurd orders?

A dark room, with the patient bound, was a common Elizabethan treatment for madness, 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, and Viola's reply, 'I am not that I play', admits her disguise without giving it away.

Which inn, named like a real Bankside house near the Globe, does Sebastian's rescuer call the best lodging in Illyria?

The Elephant is placed 'in the south suburbs' of Illyria, and a real Elephant stood on Bankside, London's own southern suburb and the Globe's neighbourhood.

Where do the twins Viola and Sebastian come from, the home Viola names when reunited with her brother?

Messaline is Viola's answer when her twin asks 'What countryman?', and the pair then test each other with their father's name, the mole on his brow and the day he died.

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 festivities were led by which mock official, 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.

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

Whitehall's guest of honour that night was a visiting Italian duke whose name echoes the play's lovesick one, the clue behind Leslie Hotson's 1954 theory.

Which servant of Olivia's confesses in the final scene that he and Sir Toby set the letter trap for Malvolio?

Fabian owns up that he and Sir Toby set the trap, pleads that it deserves laughter rather than revenge, and reveals 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?

Council of Tours bishops also set a fast before the feast, ordering monks to fast every day of December until Christmas.

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 each Twelfth Night.

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

Trevor Nunn cast his then wife, Imogen Stubbs, as Viola and filmed in Cornwall, with Lanhydrock House and Padstow standing in for Illyria.

Which member of Gandhi's cast plays the singing fool in the 1996 film of Twelfth Night?

Ben Kingsley's fool closes the film with 'The Wind and the Rain' as the humiliated and the newly married leave the estate, the song Shakespeare gives him to end the play.

Which former 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, so the 2014 Tonys nominated him twice: in a featured role for the countess and a leading one for the king.

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

Stephen Fry's return came 17 years after he walked out of the West End play Cell Mates, and the Broadway transfer brought him a Tony nomination.

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, which turned the steward's hopes of Olivia into a woman's love for her female boss.

Which future 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 seats to watch her were free, handed out in the park on the day of each performance.

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

Orson Welles had the Mercury version pressed as a set of gramophone records to accompany his abridged acting text of the play, and his radio Duke played opposite Tallulah Bankhead.

Which star of a hit 1990s sitcom played Viola at Lincoln Center in 1998, in a production broadcast live on PBS?

Helen Hunt took the stage months after winning the Best Actress Oscar for As Good as It Gets, telling Playbill that acting in Shakespeare 'makes you feel young'.

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

David Tennant's Doctor had already met Shakespeare himself, in the 2007 episode The Shakespeare Code, five years before he voiced the steward for radio.

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

Parminder Nagra's Viola and her twin reach Illyria in scenes that recall news footage of asylum seekers, in a present-day version with a multi-ethnic cast.

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 several surname nods in the film, which also turns Malvolio into a pet tarantula kept by the school nerd.

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

Johannes Brahms wrote it for the women's choir he had founded and conducted in Hamburg, setting August Schlegel's German translation.

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

Peggy Ashcroft's Viola brought the company home after a decade away, spent touring and then at London's New Theatre while its bombed house was repaired.

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

John Gielgud's Malvolio opened a rebuilt Sadler's Wells, which had closed in 1915 and stood derelict until Baylis took it on.

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.

The forged letter urges Malvolio to appear before Olivia cross-gartered and in stockings of which colour?

Yellow is 'a colour she abhors' and cross-gartering 'a fashion she detests', as the forger knows, so his grand entrance convinces Olivia that he has gone mad.

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

Helena Bonham Carter's Olivia is wooed by a steward 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 shouted it on the Thames to tout for fares heading upriver, the water taxis of Shakespeare's London.

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

Vitagraph cast Florence Turner, known to early filmgoers as 'the Vitagraph Girl', as Viola, while Charles Kent both co-directed and played Malvolio.

Which singer's hits fill a 2005 Broadway musical that moves Twelfth Night's disguises to a 1955 Midwest town?

Elvis Presley's songbook drives All Shook Up, whose heroine Natalie poses as a bearded man called Ed to get close to a guitar-strumming roustabout.

What does the forged love letter urge Malvolio to wear, cross-gartered, in a colour Olivia cannot stand?

Yellow stockings are the letter's cruellest touch, since its writer knows Olivia detests the colour and thinks cross-gartering a ridiculous fashion.

Which fictional detective quotes Twelfth Night twice, leading his fan society to pick Epiphany as his birthday?

Sherlock Holmes quotes no other Shakespeare play more than once, the Baker Street Irregulars reasoned, so they settled on that date and gather for their annual dinner each January.

Who plays Viola Hastings, a girl posing as her brother, in She's the Man, the 2006 soccer film based on Twelfth Night?

Amanda Bynes's Viola takes her brother's place at Illyria Prep, a boarding school named after the play's setting, to win a spot on the boys' team.

Shakespeare wrote of Viola grieving for a twin brother about five years after burying which of his own children?

Hamnet, the twin of Shakespeare's daughter Judith, was buried in August 1596 aged eleven, and some scholars link that loss to the play's reunited siblings.

How is the hard-drinking Sir Toby Belch related to Olivia, in whose house he lives and carouses in Twelfth Night?

Her uncle is the usual reading because Sir Toby calls Olivia his niece, though she addresses him as cousin, a loose Elizabethan word for any relative.

Which alternative title did Shakespeare give Twelfth Night, the only one of his plays first printed with a subtitle?

What You Will followed an Elizabethan fashion for subtitles, and the law student John Manningham noted the play under both names when he saw it in 1602.

Which Game of Thrones star played Malvolio in Central Park in 2025, opposite Lupita Nyong'o as Viola?

Peter Dinklage shared the open-air stage with Sandra Oh as Olivia, and the Public Theater production was later filmed for the PBS series Great Performances.

The fool's closing song in Twelfth Night, about the wind and the rain, returns in which Shakespeare tragedy?

King Lear gives a verse of the same song to its own Fool, who sings it to his master on the heath while the storm rages around them.

New Orleans's Twelfth Night Revelers, the city's second-oldest krewe, hold a ball that opens which festive season?

Carnival has been counted from Epiphany in New Orleans since at least 1900, and a Revelers masker dressed as Santa Claus who handed out gifts in the early 1870s began the custom of parade throws.

Which expression does the forged love letter order Malvolio to wear at all times when Olivia is present?

A smile is exactly wrong for a house in mourning, so when her usually sour steward keeps grinning at her, Olivia concludes he has lost his wits.

Which future Ant-Man star played the Duke in the 1998 Lincoln Center Twelfth Night that was shown live on PBS?

Paul Rudd wooed Kyra Sedgwick's Olivia in Nicholas Hytner's staging, while Philip Bosco played Malvolio.

Which future M of the Bond films played Viola in John Barton's acclaimed 1969 RSC production of Twelfth Night?

Judi Dench played Viola opposite Donald Sinden's Malvolio, in a staging remembered for showing a whole society crumbling into decay.

Which Gone with the Wind star played Viola at Stratford in 1955, with her husband Laurence Olivier as Malvolio?

Vivien Leigh and Olivier played to capacity houses that Stratford season, which also paired them in Macbeth and Titus Andronicus.

Twelfth Night never reached print in Shakespeare's lifetime; which posthumous collection finally published it?

The First Folio of 1623 preserved eighteen plays not known to have been printed before, among them Twelfth Night, Macbeth and The Tempest.

Which Restoration diarist dismissed Twelfth Night as a silly play yet went to see it three separate times?

Samuel Pepys logged the visits in his diary between 1661 and 1669, the years when London knew the play through Sir William Davenant's adaptation.

Which Star Wars star played Malvolio in a British television Twelfth Night that cast Joan Plowright as both twins?

Alec Guinness played the steward beside Ralph Richardson's Sir Toby, with the singer Tommy Steele as an unusually prominent fool.

The 1996 film of Twelfth Night found its Illyria in which English county, shooting at Padstow and Lanhydrock House?

Cornwall stood in for Illyria, and the Duke's followers wore uniforms that evoke the Austro-Hungarian Empire to suit the film's late-Victorian look.

Like Viola in Twelfth Night, which heroine of As You Like It spends much of her play disguised as a young man?

Rosalind takes the name Ganymede and uses her disguise to steer her own plot, whereas Viola simply waits for time to untangle hers.

Rani Mukerji poses as a man to play which sport in a Bollywood remake of the Twelfth Night update She's the Man?

Cricket replaces the soccer of She's the Man in Dil Bole Hadippa!, whose heroine Veera is a village girl who dreams of playing in the big league.

How does Sir Toby Belch reward the mastermind who wrote the forged letter that fools Malvolio in Twelfth Night?

He marries her offstage, a match reported in the final scene by a fellow plotter who says Sir Toby did it in recompense for the letter.

Which future Magic Mike star plays Duke, the roommate Viola falls for, in the Twelfth Night update She's the Man?

Channing Tatum's Duke captains the Illyria soccer team and is in love with Olivia until he learns who his roommate really is.

In the Twelfth Night custom of wassailing, farmers in southern England pour which drink over the roots of orchard trees?

Cider went on the roots and toast was tied in the branches, then the wassailers banged pots and fired guns to scare off any malignant spirits.

Who rides the floats, bringing children's gifts, in parades held across Spain on the evening of Twelfth Night?

The Three Magi ride through the streets while their pages collect children's last letters and throw candy to the crowd.

Which feature of their father's brow do Viola and Sebastian both recall as they test each other's identity?

A mole is the proof the twins trade once they have named their father, followed by the memory that their father died on the day Viola turned thirteen.

Which gift from Olivia does a dazed Sebastian hold up as proof that he is neither mad nor dreaming?

A pearl persuades Sebastian the wonder is real, and moments later he follows Olivia and a priest into the chantry to pledge himself to her.

What does Sebastian's rescuer lend him for sightseeing in Illyria, then demand back from a baffled Viola?

His purse is asked back as officers arrest him, and Viola's blank refusal looks to him like betrayal by the youth he pulled from the sea.

Olivia tells Malvolio he is sick of what, after he sneers at her fool's jokes early in Twelfth Night?

Self-love, Olivia says, spoils his taste for harmless fun, and it is the very vanity the forged letter later exploits.

Where do Sir Toby Belch and his friends hide in Olivia's garden to watch Malvolio find the forged letter?

In a box tree they can hear every word, and Sir Toby has to be hushed again and again as Malvolio daydreams aloud about ordering him around.

To test whether Malvolio is sane, the disguised fool asks his opinion of which Greek thinker's views on wildfowl?

Pythagoras taught that souls move between bodies, so Malvolio replies that a grandmother's soul might inhabit a bird, and is told he must believe it before his wits are allowed.

In the opening scene of Twelfth Night, the Duke says the sight of Olivia turned him into which animal of the chase?

A hart lets him pun on his own heart and cast his desires as the cruel hounds that have chased him ever since.

Sir Toby's foolish friend wishes he had studied languages instead of fencing, dancing and which Elizabethan blood sport?

Bear-baiting also explains a grudge in the play: one of Olivia's servants joins the plot because Malvolio got him into trouble with her over a bear-baiting.

Olivia's gentlewoman jokes that Malvolio's creased face now shows more lines than which newly printed object?

A map newly enlarged to show the Indies is her comparison, and she adds that she can barely stop herself throwing things at him.

The captain tells Viola he last saw her brother riding the waves tied to what, as the poet Arion rode a dolphin?

A mast kept him afloat, and the news gives Viola such hope that she pays the captain in gold for telling it.

The first recorded performance of Twelfth Night fell on which church feast, kept forty days after Christmas?

Candlemas, on 2 February 1602, formally closed the long Christmas season, so London law students were treated to a play full of revels at their feast.

A 1997 Broadway musical moved Twelfth Night to 1940s Harlem and set it to the songs of which jazz bandleader?

Duke Ellington's music carries Play On!, whose heroine Vy disguises herself as a man to beat the sexist barriers against women songwriters.

Which I, Claudius star won an Olivier Award for playing Malvolio in the Donmar Warehouse's 2009 Twelfth Night?

Derek Jacobi had won the same award in 1983 for Cyrano de Bergerac, and he played the steward at Wyndham's Theatre in the Donmar's West End season.

Which Victorian star, later the first of his profession knighted, staged Twelfth Night at his Lyceum Theatre in 1884?

Henry Irving played Malvolio himself, and his 1895 knighthood crowned a long campaign to have the theatre ranked as an art beside music and painting.

Which star of The Good Life played Malvolio in Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company staging of Twelfth Night?

Richard Briers was offered the part backstage after watching Branagh play Henry V at Stratford, and the staging was taped for British television in 1988.

Which 2001 Disney Channel movie reworks Twelfth Night with a girl competing in disguise as her injured twin brother?

Motocrossed has Andrea Carson race dirt bikes in her twin's place, with her mother's help, after he dislocates his knee just before a big race.

When Malvolio obeys the forged letter, Sir Toby Belch and his friends pretend to believe he is possessed by what?

The devil is their excuse for treating him as a madman, and they urge him to defy the fiend and say his prayers before having him locked away.

Which four letters in the forged love letter does Malvolio twist until they seem to point to his own name?

M.O.A.I. are all letters in his name, though out of order, and that is enough for him: he resolves to crush the riddle a little until it bows to him.

Malvolio recognises Olivia's wax seal on the forged letter because it carries the image of which Roman heroine?

Lucrece, the Roman wife whose story Shakespeare had already told in a long narrative poem, returns in the letter's verse, where silence cuts like her knife.

Which false name, shared with Iago's dupe in Othello, did Sebastian use before telling his rescuer who he really was?

Roderigo is dropped as the two are about to part, when Sebastian gives his real name and speaks of the sister, born in the same hour, whom he believes drowned.

Urging his friend to cut a caper, Sir Toby Belch asks whether they were not both born under which zodiac sign?

Taurus, his friend guesses, governs the sides and heart; Sir Toby corrects him to legs and thighs, which is excuse enough to set the fellow dancing.

Olivia's singing fool was almost certainly written for which clown, who replaced Will Kempe in Shakespeare's company?

Robert Armin was a scholar, a singer and a wit, which is why the part carries so many songs; he is also credited with Touchstone in As You Like It.

Twelfth Night twice mentions the Sophy, a title the Elizabethans used for the ruler of which country?

Persia's shah was the Sophy: one plotter would not swap the Malvolio joke for a pension from him, and Sir Toby claims Viola was once his fencer.

A superstition in English-speaking countries says it is unlucky to leave which Christmas things up after Twelfth Night?

Decorations are said to be just as unlucky to remove before the day, so the superstition leaves a single safe night for packing everything away.

Which star of the 1960s spy series The Avengers played Viola for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1966?

Diana Rigg's Viola showed far more physical attraction to the Duke than earlier stagings had allowed, in a court that was demonstrative throughout.

In her best-known wooing speech in Twelfth Night, the disguised Viola says she would build what at Olivia's gate?

A willow cabin is where she would camp, singing of rejected love deep into the night until the hills echoed Olivia's name.