For this third edition of Twelfth Night, Penny Gay has updated her Introduction to this well-loved Shakespearean comedy and has also provided a refreshed reading list. The edition features a thorough performance history, which focuses on a number of important recent performances and includes a new selection of photographs.
The New Cambridge Shakespeare appeals to students worldwide for its up-to-date scholarship and emphasis on performance. The series features line-by-line commentaries and textual notes on the plays and poems. Introductions are regularly refreshed with accounts of new critical, stage and screen interpretations. This third edition of Twelfth Night retains the text edited and annotated by Elizabeth Story Donno for the first edition of 1985, and features an updated introduction by Penny Gay, which focuses on recent scholarship and performance history. Building on her Introduction to the second edition, Gay stresses the play's theatricality, its elaborate linguistic games and its complex use of Ovidian myths. She analyses the delicate balance Shakespeare strikes in Twelfth Night between romance and realism, and explores representations of gender, sexuality and identity in the text. A selection of new photographs completes the edition.
