SOURCE: "Interpretation or Experience? Shakespeare at Stratford," in Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespearian Study and Production, Vol 23, 1970, pp. 131-35.

The penultimate production of the season—Twelfth Night—was awaited with interest and perhaps some trepidation, in view of the published announcements that it was to be linked with the last plays. Expectation was utterly confounded. John Barton has created the most visually graceful, most intelligently ordered production of this season. The vast stage area is gone, replaced by an elegant set, resembling an angular tunnel in perspective, but, with its candelabra and suggestion of wattle, redolent of an Elizabethan Hall. Illyria, unlike Bohemia, is somewhere. No musique concrète or 'pop' astound the air; the aural background to Orsino's part of Illyria is the dim sound of the sea and curlews crying.

Mr Barton has taken his interpretation from the text and not dressed it in...