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much like
The Comedy of Errors
or
Menaechmi
in Plautus but most like and near to that in Italian called
Inganni
. A good practice in it to make the steward believe his lady widow was in love with him, by counterfeiting a letter as from his lady, in general terms telling him what she liked best in him, and prescribing his gesture in smiling, his apparel, etc., and then when he came to practise, making believe they took him to be mad. 1
    Despite Manningham’s confusion over details, the play was certainly Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s (later King’s) Men, probably with Shakespeare himself among the cast. It is generally assumed that Robert Armin, the company clown known for his singing and musical abilities, would have played Feste, with the notoriously thin John Sincklo as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
    The play was probably written in 1601; it has been suggested that it may have been written for and first performed at court on Twelfth Night (6 January) 1601 before Elizabeth I and her guest, Virginio Orsino, Duke of Bracciano. 2 It was later performed before James I on Easter Monday 1618 and again at Candlemas in 1623, when it was simply called
Malvolio
. Charles I wrote this alternative title in his own Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays. The character’s popularity is attested in Leonard Digges’ 1640 commendatory verse to the first edition of Shakespeare’s collected poems:
     … Let but Beatrice
    And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice
    The Cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full
    To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull. 3
    After the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the reopening of the theaters, which were closed during the civil war and Interregnum (1642–60), Shakespeare’s plays were divided up between the two licensed companies. Major innovations in performance style were introduced with movable scenery, creating a more visual, illusionist theater, and the presence of women onstage.
Twelfth Night
was assigned to William d’Avenant’s Duke of York’s Men. Shakespeare’scomedies did not suit the taste of the new age though. Samuel Pepys saw three productions of
Twelfth Night
between 1661 and 1669, none of which he enjoyed, even though the leading actor of the age, Thomas Betterton, played Sir Toby Belch. Indeed, Pepys thought it “one of the weakest plays that ever I saw on the stage.” 4 In 1703 William Burnaby produced
Love Betray’d, or, The Agreeable Disappointment
, an adaptation which retained only around sixty of Shakespeare’s lines but failed in its attempt to update the play to suit contemporary tastes. “More radical transformations, such as William Wycherley’s
The Plain Dealer
or Pierre Marivaux’s
The False Servant
,” which used Shakespeare’s play as source material, were more successful. 5
    It was not until David Garrick’s production at the Theatre Royal in 1741 with Charles Macklin as Malvolio, Hannah Pritchard as Viola, and Kitty Clive as Olivia that Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night
enjoyed popularity and success once more. Macklin’s casting as Malvolio thrust the character into prominence, as the earliest productions had done. As with his Shylock in Shakespeare’s
Merchant of Venice
, Macklin’s psychological interpretation altered the perception of both characters, bringing out the pathos of the roles, making them more sympathetic, even “quasi-tragic figures.” 6 This effect was subsequently intensified in Robert Bensley’s performance in John Philip Kemble’s production, of which Charles Lamb wrote, “I confess, that I never saw the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played it, without a kind of tragic interest.” 7 Kemble’s 1811 production was the first to reverse the order of the first two scenes of the play—a strategy since adopted by numerous directors.
    In the early nineteenth century emphasis was given to the play’s musical and spectacular potential. Frederic Reynolds presented an operatic adaptation at