Apparently, one of the book clubs I am a part of reads Shakespeare in August—like for the past 17 years. It’s not the club I would have expected it of, exactly, but I was excited. I am a Shakespeare fan and have been since high school. Another thing: they bring in this Renaissance Literature expert/professor from UNC who is the son of one of the club’s founding members, so it’s this big tradition with a totally different tone, more educational. I didn’t know all this ahead of arriving at club, but boy would that have excited me, too. I love learning. Happily a life-long learner.

Viola and Sebastian, twin siblings, have been separated by shipwreck. Alone on a strange shore, Viola assumes her brother is dead and looks for a place to safely settle, which she deems most likely if she poses as a boy and becomes a consort of the local Duke. Currently, the Duke is pining away for the love of Olivia, a woman who is also mourning a lost brother and won’t give the Duke the time of day. But if the Duke sends his new companion (Viola posing as Cesario) to woo Olivia on his behalf, of course Oliviawill see sense and marry him! A subplot, wild antics, meaningful asides, and crossed loves (and genders) abound. And a sword fight. And dancing. And drunkenness. And co-weddings.

This August at book club was, as the title indicates, the reading of Twelfth Night. I do not believe I had read this Shakesperean play before, though I had a vague idea of it as a girl-dressing-up-as-boy thing. True to character, I went a little deep. I read the book (in my leather-bound complete collection), I studied it using outside sources, I watched the “best” movie adaptation, and I watched a silly, modern movie adaptation. Then while at the bookstore waiting for club to begin, I wandered past the new YA recommendations bookshelf and, lo and behold, face-forward was Twelfth Knight, a modern YA adaptation. I bought it. Then I read it, too.

I don’t know how much I can say bad about Shakespeare. He is the master. But Twelfth Night was not my favorite. It’s not the language that is lacking—or a lack of bawdy innuendos and cultural jokes—but the plot and the characters. And it’s not all bad; there are just a few missteps, I think, that make it not as satisfying as other Shakespearean plays. Of course, it’s always hard to judge a piece of literature (in this case a play) this old, and it’s almost impossible to meet it on its own terms, but despite the gender-bending and homosexual undertones (which I actually think are not there in the original but I can see why people read them in today, what with our utter lack of deep, even physical, platonic, same-sex friendships in our own time and place), I find that the jokes, plot, and portrayal of the characters don’t translate super well to modern times. Perhaps there’s too much of specific politics and cultural satire for us to catch? Or we just feel kinda different about the world at this point. Or the madcap dash to shoehorn in marriages (which works so well in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing) seems both too over-the-top, too unpredicted, and also tinged with the tragedy of one storyline, to appeal to our sensibilities. I’m no expert.

Our group was led by Dr. Reid Barbour, the UNC Chapel Hill prof. He told us that we have audience response to the play as far back as its first release (in something like 1601), written down by a John Manningham. Then he went on to commiserate about the play Socratic-style, asking us probing questions, herding us gently into considering, nay mining our reading for what we really had found there. He considered the theme to be: Is it okay to disguise yourself? Related to hypocrisy. Related to the ethics of lying. When you put it that way, how could this not translate for all time?

One of the problems with Twelfth Night is a practical joke gone wrong. Admittedly, I was put off by it, kinda disgusted, even though we were supposed to dislike the character that is being pranked—and I did. But… Not everyone felt conflicted. Either way, when there is a sudden marriage for two of the involved characters doled out at the same time the pranked character’s pledging revenge… it’s awk-ward. Not mirthful. Not playful. Maybe disturbing. As Barbour said, “The world can be very hostile and tragic. The framing is death.”

Perhaps one of the most important things to know when approaching this play—aside from the political and religious factoids Barbour threw at us (including usage of the word Puritanical at this point in history—look it up)—is an understanding of the holiday Twelfth Night in Renaissance England. It was a topsy-turvy day (made me think of Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame’s portrayal and song for the Feast of Fools, clearly) when rule-breaking was not only allowed but encouraged and celebrated. Anything goes! (At least for some people.) One of the traditional expressions of this was gender-swapping. Also feasting. Drinking. Etc.

I mean, most of the funny characters in this play—and Shakespeare’s plays all have their comic relief characters, not just the comedies like this one—are drunks with a darker side. Yikes. One of the characters’ arcs (Maria) makes almost no sense—or at least it doesn’t sell. Personally, I was confused about the social strata here. Though we see hierarchy and it’s important to the story, some of the main characters appeared to be neither lord and lady nor peasantry. They would need to be both to make all the plot points stick, so…

In the end, this play—originally titled “What You Will”—gave the audience what it willed, as far as I could tell. The immediate references. Haughty characters from society brought low. Those bawdy jokes. Easy laughs, all around. Things to know that the characters didn’t, leading to so much dramatic irony. Dramatic irony coming out our ears! Morally fringe behavior. And, what they will: a manic-hysterical finale with a happy ending. (Is Shakespeare toying with the audience here? Is he messing with the play just to say something about plays, comedies, and audiences in general? We may never know. Well, we won’t know. We’ll have to make an educated guess.) And I found it useful to think of it as a play with substitutions as opposed to one with meaningful relationships. In other words, people had needs and desires and were basically selfish, so it didn’t really matter who filled those needs and desires, in the end. (Though Barbour also thinks the play might be about just getting through the day.) Also, reunited families are super-important to Shakespeare in his works, so maybe he was just determined to reunite and unite the families, come hell or high water. Maybe order matters, and family is the epitome of order.

As with any Shakespeare, we end up asking ourselves, was the Bard writing a thesis or was he just making a buck? Another thing we’ll never really know.

THE SHAKESPEARE BOOK

I had my eye on a few Shakespeare reference books for quite some time. (I told you, I’m a fan.) Since I didn’t have any prior interaction with Twelfth Night, I went ahead and ordered DK Publishing’s The Shakespeare Book from their Big Ideas Simply Explained series. Twelfth Night is covered in six pages with a few small illustrations, a timeline, and a character-relationship map. While interesting and a good coffee table book (in a writer’s house, at least), it’s not the most thorough or even thoughtful book. That does not mean I won’t be referencing it in the future. I will be referencing it in the future. For one thing, it gives enough of the basics to put the play in context and help a reader know what to expect, how to read it, basically. And it has some fun factoids too.

It’s a light, useful book to get your bearings with any Shakespeare play. Is it Shakespeare? (Haha.) No. Is it on the grad-student level? Not even in the same ballpark. But it is essentially a For Dummies book and I’ll be hanging on to it. It would be real nice sitting on the shelf in a classroom full of highschoolers or maybe even middle schoolers. There’s no direct translations or detailed information, but it also has an introduction with general information and section introductions talking about each stage of Shakespeare’s life. A decent jumping-off point or, if you aren’t a big Shakespeare fan, a way to work out some of the basic facts and meaning for, say, a test or a book club.

TWLEFTH NIGHT (BBC 1996)

I’m going to sandwich a movie review in here between the book reviews, because the 1996 BBC movie adaptation has more in common with the play than anything that follows. I looked it up, and this is the presentation universally deemed the “best.” And I was very glad I watched it: it really helped me to understand what was going on in the play, which it followed pretty closely except for at the beginning. When I returned to the text, however, some of the actors—okay, maybe all of them—stuck with me. I couldn’t put new, imagined characters in their place.

As a movie by itself, it was pretty good, full of British actors that I recognize (like Olivia Bonham Carter, Ben Kingsley, and Imelda Staunton). It slimmed down the story quite a bit but kept the language, but the real problem was that actually seeing an actor and actress play the twins here, in HD, made the plot ridiculous. There is just no way one could be confused for the other. Which is what I had been thinking when I was reading the play. (I was told, though, that the 1980 version has a pair of actor-actress that is actually very convincing. I’ll believe it when I see it.) Also, there was an intro added to the movie that presented the twins in a career and position that made my confusion about their social status from the original play much exacerbated. They were trying to foreshadow the gender-games that would ensue and introduce comedy early (and even put a play within a play and roles within roles; how meta), but it was confusing to the plot, for sure.

I would definitely recommend it as far as complementing and understanding the play, though. Plus with the right test questions it will weed out the students who didn’t actually read the play.

TWELFTH KNIGHT

I mentioned above that I picked up a modern retelling of Twelfth Night from the YA section of my bookstore, and that would be Twelfth Knight by Alexene Farol Follmuth. Follmuth is actually the author who brought us Atlas Six (a series I have not yet started), but this is the pen name she adopted for use with her younger-audience books. (Her other name is Olivia Blake.) T. Kingfisher did it. (Ursula Vernon). I have one. (Hazel Bean.) In theory, you can’t really compare the books across those names because writing for kids and adults can be reeeeeally different. But for what it’s worth, Twelfth Knight, published only this past May, has better reviews that the popular Atlas Six series. And it’s been backed by Reese’s Book Club.

And the spine on mine cracked and broke while I was halfway into it. Wuuuuut?

Anyhoo.

Viola is sick and tired of being a girl in a man’s world. Specifically, she’s sick of being dismissed by all the guys in her roleplaying club and being harassed by all the guys on her favorite multiplayer game. Her only option? Get mad at the world and pretend to be a dude as much as possible. But when the school jock is put out of commission for a season during a football play, Viola finds herself spending a lot of time with him in and out of the online realm, only Jack doesn’t know that she is the he he has befriended online. This could get awkward. It could get nasty. It could even break someone’s heart.

With a Reese’s Book Club sticker on it, I thought it couldn’t be terrible and it would be fun to have one more go-round with Twelfth Night before putting it to bed. Not a fan of the cover, but I dug in.

I read plenty of YA these days. YA can be for adults. But it’s usually meant for teens and perhaps early twenties peeps. This is really a high school-audience book, pretty light and self-exploratory, integrating some society critique and zooming in real close to the MC. It does really have vibes that are similar to the rom coms of the 90s, but it’s much more modern in its language and approach. And all the gaming. So much gaming.

It is probably best if you know that this book is really heavy on some of the hobby stuff. If you have zero interest in role-playing, RPGs, Renaissance festivals, and multiplayer games, then there might be some challenges for you here. Then again, an interest in high school stories and enemies to friends/nerd+jock romances might just carry you through. I am about 100 miles away from video games (personally. My son and husband play), but I do love cos-play, so there was some crossover for me. I might have even learned a thing or two, especially concerning terminology, but I also might have forgotten it all the second I put the book down. What I didn’t forget was the story or the characters.

I did enjoy this book. I would recommend it for YA readers, especially actual highschoolers. (There were phrases and words that I legit didn’t even know what they meant (even with teen kids) because it is written much younger than 45.) There’s “Game On” written on the side of the pages. (A little goofy, I thought.) There’s texting in the text. And while I would say Vi is the protagonist, we get the POV of both she and Jack. There is plenty of feminism going on here, but thankfully we didn’t go to the angry feminist, anti-relationship place that I was afraid for awhile we might. I mean, Vi might have, but Follmuth wrapped it up better than I had hoped. I appreciate dealing with feminine anger, by which I just mean anger in someone who is female. It’s an underrepresented reality and, when it is handled,  is often done with too-broad strokes that further stereotypes and unrealistic expectations.

So yeah, I enjoyed it. A fun read. I was rooting for Vi and Jack. The writing was decent, clear. There might have been some things with the ending—or the plot in general—and also some side characters and general prose issues that I would have tightened up, but for a just-pulled-off-the-shelf-on-a-whim? Good times.

How did it compare with the original? Was it a faithful adaptation? I would definitely encourage a high schooler reading Twelfth Night to also read this, but it was certainly not a one-for-one kind of thing. The names are there, including the names of the high schools and even other places that got other Shakespeare names (like Verona). But otherwise, this is a very loose adaptation meant more to have fun than to make the original material approachable or even relevant. It had much more in common with the movie adaptation She’s the Man, but we’ll talk about that in three, two…

SHE’S THE MAN (2006)

Was it awesome? Or was it terrible? Is it a cult classic? Or is it a ridiculous flop? Both, really. Which means you’ll probably love it or hate it. Then again, I simply couldn’t make up my mind. One minute I loved it, the next I felt deep derision. I laughed out loud. I scoffed aloud. It was a roller coaster. A good roller coaster? I just don’t know!

She’s the Man is a 2006 movie (Amanda Bynes, Channing Tatum) based on Twelfth Night. Like Twelfth Knight, it has similar names and the overarching story, but none of the details and no one-to-ones. It takes place in a modern high school (two high schools, one a boarding school, actually), where a girl who can’t play soccer because her school only has a boys team poses as her brother to go to another high school and play soccer… against the a-holes who wouldn’t let her play in the first place. And there’s the relationship-dimension to it, of course, cuz her roommate and fellow soccer player has no idea she’s a, well, she, and yet strange sparks are a-flyin’.

It is a divisive movie. It won both a Kids Choice Award and a Stinker. Was it meant to be terrible because it was based on Shakespearean farce? I dunno. But the acting was probably the worst bit of it (despite what you might read elsewhere). And I guess the absurdity, but that is understandable. Laughable at times, and not necessarily because it’s funny. Has it held up with all the recent changes in the social discourse on gender and gender identity? Almost? Yes? Basically. Definitely worth watching, but you’ll likely either thank me heartily or threaten me for having recommended it. About a fifty-fifty shot, I’d say.

TWELFTH NIGHT

“If music be the food of love, play on, / Give me excess of it” (A1, s1)

“I am sure / care’s an enemy to life” (A1, s3).

“Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage” (A1, s5).

TWELFTH KNIGHT

“The thing is that a) we are nerds, by which I mean we collectively make up the top 1 percent of our graduating class and are probably going to rule the world someday even if it loses us some popularity contests…” (p6).

“Because apparently I’m supposed to be nicer if I want people to agree with me. (Big ups to my grandma for that sage advice)” (p8).

“Because when boys hear a girl’s voice, they either come for unnecessarily, thinking you’ll be easy prey, or the think everything you say is flirting. Being nice to a geek while being visibly female is the kiss of death. Do you know how many times I’ve gotten vulgar messages or explicit pictures? And if I say no, do you know how many times I’ve been called a bitch?” (p33).

“So of course I’m angry. I’m angry all the time. From the betrayals of my government to the hypocrisies of my peers, it seems like the awfulness never rests and neither can I” (p34).

“And it’s not just me–I don’t know how any girl can exist in the world without being perpetually furious” (p34).

“‘I’m fine.’ By which I mean a few things: I’m angry as shit, and bitter, too. I don’t know what the hell kind of future I have now’ …. But what comes out of mouth is ‘Dunno. I’m bored.’ / ‘Ah,’ says Nick with a nod, clearly relieved I haven’t offered up something way darker, so I know I said the right thing'” (p49).

“I push my chair back, feeling that weird amalgam of things that only happens when you’ve stayed up way too late and the whole world feels kind of fake, like maybe nothing else exists outside of you and your thoughts” (p100).

“I already know there’s something wrong with me; I know there’s a reason people don’t like me. Lots of reasons. / But secretly, I would like someone to see me for what I am and choose my anyway” (p100).

“He’s unbearable. ‘You do know that telling girls to “chill” is a famously bad call, right?’ / ‘Don’t’ sell yourself short, Vi,’ he says in one of his falsely cheerful voices. ‘You’re not just any girl. You’re a fun little tyrant'” (p103).

“It’s not about being better, or being stronger, or being right. Certainly not of the cost is your change to feel love and acceptance” (p106).

“Because the only thing in this life that actually matters is how we’re connected to each other” (p106).

“‘But I think I’d be embarrassed to do something wrong. Or say something dumb.’ / ‘Why? Boys never worry about all the dumb things they say and do, trust me,’ I mutter, and she laughs” (p113).

“Everyone wants racism to be this bomb they can disarm rather than what it is, which is… fluid” (p125).

“For some reason–cough, imperialism–a person is free to dream up a world with mythical creatures and magical powers so long as it’s still mostly British” (p133).

“My swagger is built on a foundation of adoration and envy. Hers is flat-out refusal ro let anyone tell her who to be” (p144).

“‘What if I don’t see any other paths?’ / I sigh. ‘It’s just a metaphor, Orsino. We’re teenagers. We don’t know what comes next” (p162).

“…Vi, wanting someone in your life doesn’t have to mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re soft. It just means there’s someone in this world who makes you like everything just a little bit more when they’re with you, and in the end, isn’t that something?” (p207).

“Darling Viola, my clever, brilliant girl. The last thing you need is more thinking” (p208).

“Sometimes it feels like there’s a cliff-edge, the right moment for the truth, and you either pull yourself back from it or you sail headfirst into a crevasse” (p209).

“‘Why are feelings so brutal?’ she wails. ‘Everyone makes friendship seem like garden parties and sleepovers when really it’s Jurassic Park for emotions” (p211).

“It was a relief to finally understand, then a smack upside the head to realize I wasn’t remotely the center of her narrative…” (p213).

“It was a simpler time when I could look around at all the incompetence and decide for myself how things should be done” (p220).

“…but in the end, it doesn’t matter what you could have done. It matters what you do, and more importantly, it matters who you do it with” (p257).

“It matters how we choose to take the field. It matters what we see when we look at our possibilities” (p257).

“You act like you’re all alone, but you’re not. You’ve never been alone. You just didn’t want to choose what I had to give you” (p266).

“You told me that if I decided to be myself, I wouldn’t have to be alone,’ she says simply. ‘Neither will you'” (p272).

“‘You’re not a bad person. You’re just a weirdly difficult one.’ / ‘Okay–‘ / ‘And you’re scared, Vi. You’re so scared of everything'” (p286).

“But I also told her that being angry didn’t mean I didn’t care about her, or that I would rather let that anger undo the things between us that I knew were real” (p294).

“It’s the thing that happens to you while you’re wide awake and dreaming” (p301).

“The game isn’t the dice. It’s who’s with you at the table” (p301).