Twelfth Night Synopsis
-Adapted for this production from The Pocket Companion to Shakespeare’s Plays by J C Trewin

Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is in love with the Lady Olivia. Viola, “of Messaline,” wrecked on the Illyrian shore and believing wrongly that her twin brother Sebastian has been drowned, becomes (in the male disguise of Cesario) a page to Orsino. Viola/Cesario falls in love with the Duke. She bears his reiterated and scorned love message to the young countess Olivia, who is mourning affectedly for a dead brother. Olivia falls in love with Viola/Cesario. Meanwhile Olivia’s parasitic relative Sir Toby, her gentlewoman Maria, her “allowed fool” Feste and Fabian, also in her service, join to trick Malvolio, her somber, haughty and puritanical steward, an enemy of them all. Presently, told by a forged letter (ostensibly Olivia’s, actually Maria’s) that Olivia is infatuated with him, Malvolio takes to himself the phrase: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon ‘em.”

Obeying the false command to appear before his mistress smiling and in absurdly cross-gartered yellow stockings, Malvolio is carried off to a dark cell as a presumed madman. Sebastian, who we have realized by now was saved (believing his sister lost), has reached the town with his rescuer Antonio, a piratical captain who had once fought against Orsino’s ships. The plotters have persuaded Andrew, jealous of Olivia’s obvious love for Cesario, to challenge the page to a duel; while this is being scrambled through, Antonio arrives, mistakes Cesario for Sebastian, draws his sword to help, and is arrested by the Duke’s officers.

Soon afterwards Toby, believing Sebastian to be Cesario, attacks him and is sternly rebuked by Olivia. Also mistaken, she begs the young man to go with her; he does so, pleasantly bewildered, and in a brief later scene she urges marriage and they follow a priest to the chantry. Finally, confusions are resolved: the twins recognize each other; Viola, herself again, will be Orsino’s Duchess, his “fancy’s queen”; Toby weds Maria; Malvolio, released, swears revenge on “the whole pack of you”; and the comedy fades in Feste’s twilit song.