SOURCE: "Twelfth Night," in Old Vic Prefaces: Shakespeare and the Producer, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1954, pp. 55-79.

In the following essay, Hunt explores the directorial issues that informed his production ofTwelfth Night,focusing in particular on balancing the play's lyrical and comic elements, setting and costume, and the handling of the major characters.

This play is, in the grave parts, elegant and easy, and, in some of the lighter scenes, exquisitely humorous. Aguecheek is drawn with great propriety, but his character is, in great measure, that of natural fatuity, and is, therefore, not the proper prey of a satirist… The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life.

Thus does Dr. Johnson criticize the play we are to perform...