ABSTRACT
The one occasion in Twelfth Night upon which this audience displayed inappropriate hilarity was when Olivia and Sebastian made their lightning match. As a final word of compliment to Jacques Copeau, it takes many words of discerning praise to express the author's appreciation of his work at the Vieux Colombier. It is very cheering to an Englishman to see a crowded French audience carried away in spontaneous enjoyment of a Shakespeare play. The good cause of Anglo-French friendship is in debt to Jacques Copeau for his production of Twelfth Night. In England our 17th-century Puritans doused its artistic side with cold water, and, though we are at last just about dry, the rheumatic effects remain. This too sustained note of half-pathetic irony is arguably legitimate from a Viola's point of view, but it needs more accommodation to the general purpose of the play.
