William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night. Ed. Keir Elam (The Arden Shakespeare: Third Series). London: Cengage Learning, 2008. Pp. xx + 427. 31 b/w illustrations. Cloth £ 60.00. Paper £ 8.99.

Twelfth Night has, like a cat, many lives. Keir Elam’s edition gives us a caring, exquisitely multifaceted portrayal of the inscrutable being that was Shakepeare’s last Elizabethan comedy. Over some 150 pages, Elam introduces the reader to the work’s place within the Shakespearean canon (with a perceptive and unusual nexus to Hamlet) and questions of comic genre; as he observes, the many puns on bear-baiting turn the play into a ‘potentially bloody revenge comedy’ (p. 9). Ample space is given to performance and reception history, editorial questions, material culture and the visual arts. In this way, Elam elucidates the meaning of status furniture (Malvolio’s obsession) and allusions to writing material (significant in a play abounding with letters); he considers early modern dancing and fencing, and dwells on social pressures and class. Other topics are clowns and their frolicsome audiences, tautological riddles as traps for narcissists, saturnalian traditions mingling with the masque form, Middle Temple entertainments, and the pre-Reformation festive calendar. A particular strength of this edition is its finely-tuned consideration of song and music in the play (music scores are provided) as well as musical adaptations of Twelfth Night.

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