SOURCE: "Augustin Daly and the Shakespeare Comedies," in Shakespeare on the American Stage,: From Booth and Barrett to Sothern and Marlowe, Vol. 2, Associated University Presses, 1987, pp. 54-92.

For 1893 Daly determined to surpass all his previous Shakespearean accomplishments: in Twelfth Night he found stuff that appealed with extraordinary intensity to his "creative" instincts. He disassembled the play and rebuilt it, cleansed it of every grossness, doubled the amount of music that Shakespeare called for (but canceled that too gloomy song "Come away death"), hired Graham Robertson to costume it in the high esthetic mode, and invented the most striking scenic effects, from violent storm to rose garden by moonlight. By cutting more than six hundred lines he got rid of everything that might endanger the "poetry" and "beauty." His efforts hit popular taste exactly as he intended. In New York Twelfth Night ran for six weeks (February 21 to April...