Twelfth Night and the New Orleans Twelfth Night Revelers

The interlacing of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and early modern festival customs remains striking to audiences and critics throughout North America and Europe. ¹ Surprisingly few critics have discussed Shakespeare’s great festive comedy in relation to the Louisiana traditions of Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras, one of the only regions in America that continues to cultivate these Carnival practices today. ² The Anglo-Americans who immigrated to New Orleans and the surrounding areas were among those who perpetuated these religious (or sacrilegious) festivities that were celebrated for centuries in medieval and Renaissance England and Europe. The Crescent City contains numerous immigrants not only from France, Spain, Ireland, Catholic Germany, and Italy but also from the Middle Atlantic states. These American immigrants brought with them a distinctly English heritage. As Reid Mitchell argues, “New Orleans Mardi Gras is so often traced to its French or African-Caribbean origins that it is sometimes forgotten that Anglo-Americans lived in Louisiana with festive traditions of their own” (1995, 26). Both Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Feast of the Epiphany celebrations by the Twelfth Night Revelers, the second oldest Mardi Gras krewe in New Orleans formally organized in 1870, include holiday practices of consuming cakes and ale and appointing a Lord of Misrule. ³