The sixty-minute Shakespeare--Twelfth night

this has got to be the gayest of shakespeares plays

This was actually really fun an enjoyable! Watching it as a play would probably be tons more fun. I read the play while listening to an audio recording (which was awesome; great cast, sound effects, overall great) that really enhanced the entire experience of reading the play. There are a few things I found to be less logical than I would have liked, but I can only expect so much of a comedy, I suppose. 
(But seriously tho, are we really going to pretend Sebastion and Antonio weren't in a fully fledged relationship?? That seems like such a stretch, Antonio legit said they spent both day AND NIGHT together for months! And Antonio is constantly confessing his love for Sebastian so why, o why, did they have to pretend their relationship wasn't a thing that was happening?? Damn the hets, man.)

I think this is probably one of the weirdest Shakespeare plays I've read. I haven't seen the play, but I think this would probably be a fun one to see performed. It seems like this is Shakespeare at (potentially) his silliest/least mature. (I mean, it's got characters named Belch and Aguecheek ... on top of clowns and fools and all the other normal tropes of Shakespeare plays, like misunderstandings of gender, and random falling in love.)

The reason I picked this one up, though, was because of a thing I heard repeatedly over the years — that Shakespeare's comedies all end with weddings, and the tragedies all end in death. So I was looking for something happy, with weddings at the end. I wouldn't necessarily call this one satisfactory on that front. Sure, Olivia gets married — but not to the person she thought she was marrying, because twins! and also the person she thought she was marrying also happened to be a woman disguised as a man. And I guess it's implied that Viola and Duke Orsino will get married too, but like in his last monologue, he's still calling her Cesario, and like, does he even know her first name??. Details! None of this is important! Let's get drunk! (Oh, we already did that!) Wink wink.

Also I'm not sure why Maria was such a jerk. I mean, why convince a guy that your boss has a crush on him, then make him out to be crazy and lock him up in the dark? What's the motive?

Anyway. This wasn't my favorite, not by a long shot, but it was entertaining enough.

Out of the jaws of death.

Orsino loves Olivia. Olivia loves Cesario. Cesario is really Viola, who loves Orsino.