Twelfth Night: From Shakespeare and Movie Director Trevor Nunn

To fit a love story from beginning to end in one play requires that people fall in love within minutes of meeting each other so they can have a few conflicts and still get married by the end of the hour and a half show. Trevor Nunn, the director of the newest movie version of the play Twelfth Night, added more romance between the characters that were falling in love so that a contemporary audience would accept that love as being legitimate. 

Falling in love instantly was accepted in the entertainment business in the late 1500’s to early 1600’s, the time in which Shakespeare wrote his plays. To get to the really entertaining parts of a play they had to go through the necessary parts of people falling in love and having that done instantly was normal practice. Nowadays the audience demands to know why for everything, especially relationships. Answers are demanded in today’s culture, and combining Shakespearean love with modern love usually needs some alterations for the contemporary audience to accept it. Trevor Nunn altered the circumstances surrounding the Shakespearean dialogue just enough to add to the romantic parts of Twelfth Night without taking too much liberty with the work.