The Disorder of Love and the Love of Disorder: Cognitive Interplay in Shakespeare’s "Twelfth Night" at the Middle Temple, 1602

Twelfth Night presents both personal love and festive reveling as phenomena that create disorder. Contemporary productions often render the play as a romantic comedy in which a temporary disruption of personal and social harmony is finally resolved by the prospect of three marriages. A richer and more complex appreciation of the play can be gained by exploring its first recorded performance at the Middle Temple (a law college) in 1602. I do this through the lens of embodied cognition, a hypothesis arising from cognitive neuroscience which holds that cognition is grounded in bodily interactions with the physical and social environment, and that mental concepts arise from the body’s sensory and motor neural systems. Thus the meaning of Twelfth Night in performance is comprised not only of the script’s dialogue, but also the biology, experiences, and values of its performers and audience members. Envisioning the play’s performance in the physical space and social context of the Middle Temple highlights ways in which Shakespeare’s company raised moral complexities for audience members whose legal decisions shaped the order of early modern English society.