SOURCE: "Modern Dress, Old Hat," in Encounter, Vol. LXIX, No. 4, November, 1987, pp. 64-6.

The RSC production of Twelfth Night. . . , has the sort of clever charm which would make a forward-looking stomach turn. It is set very beautifully (a serious lapse already) in a Greek island or town, identifiable to British theatre audiences who holiday in such places when they can. Most critics were reminded of Mykonos; I was inclined to see Lindos on Rhodes. But there, chacun à son goùt.

The change of setting is valid. Geography, unlike poetry, was a hazy matter for most Elizabethans. Shakespeare tended to put Italian-named characters down in places like Bohemia or Illyria about Which he knew gloriously little, and set them speaking English. Twelfth Night has, thank God, escapist tendencies. It asks for a faraway, faintly exotic Levantine place in which to set up Italianate Englishmen to play against women as...