SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Punch, Vol. 257, No. 6730, September 3, 1969, pp. 393.

For the young lovers in Twelfth Night the last scene brings them all their hearts desire. Twins are reunited, boys turn out to be girls, a double marriage is arranged. Then the mood is interrupted—though not so much interrupted as permanently modulated into something profounder than the conventional happy end of romance. With one terse, tremendous line—"I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you!"—Malvolio flings himself out of the play. And lest we think this scene merely is an interruption in the happy story the clown Feste stays on the otherwise emptied stage to give us his ambiguous song about the wind and the rain, man's estate and the sadness of life.

Because Twelfth Night, a play full of mirth, is shot through with sadness. John Barton's superb production at Strat-ford-upon-Avon realises...