The Annotated Shakespeare series enables readers to fully understand and enjoy the plays of the world's greatest dramatist Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare's funniest plays and also one of his most romantic. A young noblewoman, Viola, shipwrecked in a foreign land and separated from her twin brother, dresses as a man in order to enter the service of Orsino, duke of Illyria. Complications ensue--deceptions, infatuations, misdirected overtures, malevolent pranks--as everyone is drawn into the hilarious confusion. This fully annotated edition makes the play completely accessible to readers in the twenty-first century. Eminent linguist and translator Burton Raffel offers generous help with vocabulary, pronunciation, and prosody and provides alternative readings of phrases and lines. His on-page annotations give readers all the tools they need to comprehend the play and begin to explore its many possible interpretations.