Want to know where Twelfth Night is set? See each setting Shakespeare used in the play on the map below.
Shakespeare set Twelfth Night in Illyria – the ancient name for the coast on the Adriatic Sea, which takes in parts of modern Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro. The period in which the play is set is not obvious. The play is based on a quite common story, popular in Shakespeare’s time, of two siblings separated and the misunderstandings that arise from that. However, it’s difficult to gauge the importance of the setting of Twelfth Night to the story.
The map below shows all the locations Shakespeare used for Twelfth Night. You can zoom in on the map for a more detailed view of an area, and click the icons on the map for more information. Text in quotation marks are the specific locations Shakespeare references in his Twelfth Night text.
Twelfth Night on stage at Lake Tahoe Shakespeare
In your description of the Twelfth Night’s setting, called Illyria, you enumerate the countries stretching along the Adriatic Coast, from Slovenia, all the way down to Albania. However, one of the mentioned countries does not belong there and has never belonged among the coastal Adriatic lands. That is Serbia, which is totally landlocked, but which has, sadly, throughout its rather short history, always showed an unhealthy, nationalistic, appetite for the lands stretching along the Adriatic Sea, with the intention of creating the so-called Greater Serbia, just as it was trying to do, during the last wars of aggression, on Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, from 1990 to 1995. I am wondering how this misinformation has penetrated your text.
Best wishes, Dr. Ivo Soljan, Professor of Renaissance Studies and Shakespeare, GVSU, Michigan, USA