ABSTRACT
In his appraisal of the relationship between the dramatic and the exotic A. P. Riemer states that “the distortions and the rearrangement of everyday life in most comedies represent artistic necessity – the discovery of an ideal landscape in which playfully ambivalent concerns find a proper and comfortable environment” (1980, 65). Illyria is an unclear destination hesitating between reality and fiction. One could argue that other Shakespearean comedies fictionalize their own geographical situation, but Twelfth Night seems to take the process a step further in featuring a mythical country which has disappeared in the turmoil of history. This is not Italy, Greece, Spain or Austria; this is Illyria, the land of the exotic. The creation of an ideal landscape which exists only in a mythological intertext or in other plays (2 Henry VI, 4.1.107) as a fictional counterpart to familiar spatial landmarks is essential to the dynamics of the performance because it provokes the audience’s wonderment.
