Twelfth Night

by William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night: Genre 1 key example

New! Understand every line of Twelfth Night.
Read our modern English translation.
Genre
Explanation and Analysis:

With its atmosphere of music, love, and merriment, Twelfth Night is a quintessential Shakespearean comedy, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to other plays in the same genre. Twins and mistaken identity are as crucial to the plot of Twelfth Night as they are to the plot of The Comedy of Errors, and the crossdressing for which Twelfth Night is famous also occurs in As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice, as well as the frame story for The Taming of the Shrew. As in Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream, misunderstandings and love triangles initially keep the lovers apart, but these conflicts are all eventually resolved.