SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer, 1980, p. 155.

Illyria has often been a strange place; yet though it is a world just over the horizon, it must not be fantasticated beyond belief. Terry Hands joined the various directors who have used the secondary title, What You Will, as an invitation to adventure. At Stratford he also accepted a hint from the calendar. At first it was obviously a hard Illyrian winter, snow powdered beneath the leafless trees, everyone muffled up but (for all the low temperature) staying perpetually and unpersuasively out of doors. Until Malvolio's letter-speech the play was unwarmed, though Orsino did his best by carrying infatuation into near-frenzy. So intelligent an actress as Kate Nicholls was obliged to present Olivia as a coquette with a wild comingon disposition, a director's tiresome caprice. We know that Orsino and Olivia are given to...