Abstract
If a manuscript copy of Twelfth Night had not been kept by the King’s Men for more than two decades, it would have to be listed as one of the period’s “lost” plays. In the absence of its full text in the 1623 Folio, the only idea we could now make of it would have come from John Manningham’s report of the performance he enjoyed at Middle Temple Hall on Candlemas Night in February 1602. That would merely tell us:
At our feast wee had a play called “Twelve night, or what you will”; much like the commedy of errores, or Menechmi in Plautus, but most like and neere to that in Italian called Inganni.
A good practise in it to make the steward beleeve his Lady widdowe was in Love with him, by counterfayting a letter, as from his Lady, in generali termes, telling him what shee liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparraile, &c, and then when he came to practise, making him beleeve they tooke him to be mad.1
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Notes
Robert Parker Sorlien, ed., The Diary of John Manningham of the Middle Temple, 1602–3 (Hanover, NH: The University Press of New England, 1976), 48.
W. W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration, 4 vols. (London: Bibliographical Society, 1939–59).
See Charles Whitney, Early Responses to Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 170–80.
Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare’s Opposites: The Admiral’s Company 1594–1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). This identification, first made by Fred L. Jones (“Look About You and the Disguises,” PMLA 44 [1929]: 835–41), has, however, recently been challenged. M. A. Nelson’s essay in Stephen Thomas Knight’s collection, Robin Hood: An Anthology of Scholarship and Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999) argues that its opening scene echoes Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV of 1597, concluding that it must consequently post-date 1597. C. K. Ash, currently editing the play, dates it in 1597 or later, and also questions the connection with the “Disguises” title. One of the key issues relates to Robin Hood, who disguises himself in the play as a citizen’s wife. His initial appearance as the noble Earl of Huntington matches his elevated status in Munday’s Huntington plays of 1598.
A useful study of this complex issue is Lukas Erne’s Beyond the Spanish Tragedy: A Study of the Works of Thomas Kyd (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).
E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930), 2.194 and 1.272.
See David Novarr, “Dekker’s Gentle Craft and the Lord Mayor of London,” Modern Philology 57 (1960): 233–9, and
Amy L. Smith, “Performing Cross-Class Clandestine Marriage in ‘The Shoemaker’s Holiday’,” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 41 (2005): 333–55.
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© 2014 Andrew Gurr
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Gurr, A. (2014). What is Lost of Shakespearean Plays, Besides a Few Titles?. In: McInnis, D., Steggle, M. (eds) Lost Plays in Shakespeare’s England. Early Modern Literature in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137403971_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137403971_4
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