Twelfth Night: ‘Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun: it shines everywhere’

Episode 199: The line I have used for the title of today’s episode is spoken by Feste the fool, a central character in ‘Twelfth Night’. Fools have already played significant roles in Shakespeare’s previous plays and as you will hear there are possible connections between them and Feste, but significant as he is, and fools will be in forthcoming Shakespeare plays, there is so much more to Twelfth Night than just that one character. It is a play where other Shakespearean comedic characteristics also feature – identical twins, empowered and quick-witted women, variants on the braggart soldier character, and an exotic, virtually mystical, setting, spring to mind. If ever there was a comedy where Shakespeare was completely in his stride then this, for me, is the one. The early performance history of the play The dating of the play The early print history of the play The sources for the play The establishing of social roles in the play The positions of the knights Sir Toby and Sir Andrew The role of Feste, the fool. The impact of Feste’s songs Feste as a portrait of Thomas Nashe The centrality of Malvolio to the themes of the play Feste’s sung epilogue to the play Love, desire and infatuation in the play The play as a knowingly theatrical story The performance history of the play Some of the critical reaction to the play Link to Rachel Aanstad’s ‘A Bawdy Twelfth Night’ for UK customers: Link to Rachel Aanstad’s ‘A Bawdy Twelfth Night’ for US customers: Support the podcast at: Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You can listen to Twelfth Night: ‘Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun: it shines everywhere’ online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Twelfth Night: ‘Foolery, sir, does walk about the orb like the sun: it shines everywhere’ is an episode from The History Of European Theatre by Philip Rowe.

This episode is 35:40 long.

This episode was published on Jan 5, 2026.

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