The fact is that we don't have any records of how Shakespeare's actors played this text. Even if we did, it wouldn't mandate that we must continue to do so.
The question, I suppose, is what one prefers?
I doubt that Nunn forgot to bring out the comedy that's in the text. I suspect that he was trying simply to create something new, which is sometimes a goal that produces interesting approaches but more often results in oddities like this film.
To me, the real problem with Nunn's making this film in such a non-traditional (if not outright perverse?) interpretation is that the great majority of people who will see it will not know, to begin with, what the traditional approaches have been. A great majority will not know what great fun this play CAN be on the stage or screen!
The best version that I know of on video/DVD is the old one with Alec Guinness as Malvolio, Ralph Richardson as Toby Belch, and Tommy Steele as Feste. Their scenes together are so funny. Unfortunately, both Viola and Sebastian are played by Joan Plowright, so the video is marred a bit by this camera-trick that falls flat, but the hijinks with Toby and Malvolio are hysterically funny.
To address some of the questions raised in the previous messages:
While "comedy" in Shakespeare's age was a play that ends happily, the text of this play IS filled with many laugh-out-loud aspects that moderns don't necessarily "get," so Shakespeare's original productions likely played up much more of the laughable aspects. This is what I meant by the "traditional" readings of the play.
For example, when Malvolio is asked to dress in yellow stockings, cross-gartered, the joke (for Elizabethans) would have been two-fold: yellow was symbolic of the liver (which was thought to be the seat of lust-- hence Malvolio's statement to Olivia that he is "yellow in my legs"); cross-gartering had at one time been fashionable, but by Shakespeare's time it was hopelessly old-fashioned. So, Malvolio is tricked into dressing in an extremely old fashioned and self-mocking manner while smiling and appearing proud and vain. It is a delicious trick upon one who is so terribly arrogant.
Feste's song to the Duke ("Come away, come away, death") is also a mockery of the Duke without the Duke's realizing it. Far from being actually a sad song about death and pain, the lyric would have been recognized by Elizabethans as being ridiculously sappy-- Petrarchanism pushed to the most ludicrous extremes. Not only "I will die for your love" but "I'll die for your love and you won't even be able to find my grave to come there and feel guilty about it." Like cross-gartering, this kind of sappy narcissism was once fashionable in love poetry, but by Shakespeare's time, it was laughable. The Duke seriously asks for it and obviously wants to pay Feste for it when the song is done; Feste's answer, "And pleasure must be paid for, one time or another, sir," is a subtle put-down of the Duke's self-indulgent infatuation with a woman he doesn't even know. He is actually in love with his own ego, which makes him in need of Viola's schooling.
These are only a few examples of reasons that, at least in Shakespeare's time, it would have been a "sparkling" comedy (as many literary critics refer to this play). Granted, Viola believes she has suffered a real grief; however, she goes about getting on with life as optimistically as she can. Olivia puts up a front of grief (saying she will grieve for seven years for her brother's death) but discards her plan the moment she sees a young man she falls for. They are opposite sides of the same coin-- hence the similar spellings of their names.
In Shakespeare's day, comedy not only must end happily but cure society's ills by helping us recognize our own foibles on the stage and laugh at ourselves. Laughter is the curative element in comedy (whereas tears are to be the curative force in tragedy).
I'm not saying that Trevor Nunn isn't within his rights to interpret Twelfth Night darkly, but if you have ever seen this play done with sparkling comedy, you may not be so keen on loving this film. These fabulous actors expend such talent on what seems (at least to me) a film that is melancholy only to be different. Every time I watch it, I keep wishing I could see them redirect their energies.
Twelfth Night has not, in fact, been classed along with Shakespeare's other "problem plays." It is a full-fledged comedy, but with one aspect that differentiates it: the ending refuses what we call "comic closure" when Malvolio refuses to forgive and let himself be grafted back into the social structure. This would be the "normal" pattern of comedy-- the one who was anti-social (the one who refused to laugh, tried to prevent others from laughing, believed in his own superiority, and even insulted many of the others around him) is humiliated in public and given a chance to redeem himself by reforming, asking forgiveness from those he has wronged, and forgiving those who have humiliated him; then the cured anti-social one is grafted back into society. But Malvolio says, "I will be revenged upon the whole pack of you!" which is a stubborn rejection of the spirit of comedy, altogether. It is as if he is a figure from tragedy who refuses to inhabit their comic world. So, the ending *is* a bit incomplete in this way-- though all the other comic ends are tied together at the end (even Maria and Toby marry!).
It has been wondered whether Shakespeare thought that forgiving and asking for forgiveness would simply not ring true for this great character Malvolio that he has created? or did he get to the end of the play and feel that, regardless of all the "strange pairing-off disease that strikes at the ends of comedies," there has to be something that speaks of reality? Or was he tired of writing comedies when he got to the end of this great play? Or, having written Hamlet not long before this play, did he come to finish it and find that comedy no longer fully encapsulated his artistic vision?
The "problem plays" do, in fact, follow Twelfth Night-- in a sesne, it ushers them in. Or, I should say, Malvolio ushers them in.
So, the traditional approach to this play is to say that the ENDING is not comic-- at least in Malvolio's reaction.
But to interpret the entire play with melancholy, sadness, gloom is simply not traditional. It's fine, of course, since Nunn wanted to do something new. And it's fine if you, as a viewer, love it that way.
But for me, it loses something in this version.
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