SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XVII, No. 4, Autumn, 1966, pp. 396-98.

Nothing that I had heard or read suggested that Mr. Clifford Williams' production of Twelfth Night was a good one. It seemed that he was trying to repeat his success with The Comedy of Errors by applying the same method to very different material. If you are out to debunk romanticism—a fashionable pastime in the contemporary theater—you will find that Shakespeare has already gone a good way in this direction, and that it is dangerous to out-pace him. As always, Shakespeare holds the balance, and the first business of the director—before he gives rein to his invention, and Mr. Williams' invention is exceedingly fertile—must be to hold the scales even. In this production they were not held quite evenly. There was no doubt of Viola's love for Orsino or...