SOURCE: "Or What You Will," in The New Republic, Vol. 103, No. 23, December 2, 1940, pp. 755-56.

It is only fair to say of the new production of Twelfth Night: or, What You Will that some of our best critics have found it an occasion of great merit. They have found in it a deal of sweet enchantment, fun, loveliness, and wit and merriment. If you can get that from the occasion, you are lucky; for that was Shakespeare's intention undoubtedly.

To my mind the event is very dull, not to say banal, unromantic and pedestrian. And in the familiar manner of the Theatre Guild is without joy. It does not seem to rise on pleasant exercise. Culture has the relation to pleasure or satisfaction that any other access of vitality has. We should not be led to wonder, as I was at the Guild production of Twelfth Night, why the...