The Sources for Twelfth Night

Ripe Good Scholar

This is episode 41 of Ripe Good Scholar: The Sources for Twelfth Night

Hello and welcome to Ripe Good Scholar. Since we just celebrated the epiphany, or twelfth night, we thought it would be worthwhile to visit the famous Shakespeare text of the same name. Like most of Shakespeare’s work, the story was borrowed from another source. In this case, it was an English prose version of an Italian play. The prose adaptation, Apollonius and Silla, was written by an English soldier, Barnabe Rich. Today Eli and I are going to look at Rich’s text to see what Shakespeare borrowed and what he left out. By closely examining Shakespeare’s sources, we can get a glimpse into his mind, the mind of a genius. It can also provide some unique insights into the text itself.

For this episode, I read Rich’s Apolonius and Silla, An Original of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night edited by Morton Luce. If you want to check out that book and so much more, head over to ripegoodscholar.com/ep41.

Teller of Tales by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4467-teller-of-the-tales

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Minstrel Guild by KevinMacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4056-minstrel-guild

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/