Twelfth Night. The play’s primary title alludes to a Christian holiday, the Feast of the Epiphany, which marks the culmination of the 12 days of Christmas on January 6th. (Its secondary title, What You Will, has been construed, alternately, as a throwaway like As You Like It or Much Ado about Nothing, or as a pun on Shakespeare’s first name.) Epiphany celebrates the coming of the Magi or Three Wise Men, who recognize Jesus as savior, the baptism of Jesus, and, later, the miracle at Cana (John 2:1-12), when Jesus transformed water into wine at a wedding celebration. By Shakespeare’s time, however, Epiphany, or Twelfth Night (held on January 5th), was being celebrated in England more as a secular holiday, with dancing, feasting, and revelry. The following entry for January 6, 1594, appeared in the memoirs of Anthony Bacon, a gentleman at court: “Twelfth Night was celebrated at Court by dancing which continued till 1 o’clock after midnight, the Queen being seated in a high throne, and next to her chair the Earl of Essex with whom she often devised in sweet and favourable manner” (Bacon in Harrison, vol.
