I found Twelfth Night to be sinfully boring until I started thinking and writing on Shakespeare’s bear-baiting analogies and Orsino’s character. Some really remarkable work I found includes John Ford’s “Changeable taffeta: Re-dressing the bears in Twelfth Night,” and Andreas Höfele’s “The place of the human: Shakespeare’s stage and the bear garden.”

Watched BBC Shakespeare’s 1980 production and thought it was rather toothless. Not much interesting staging, though I did find Sinéad Cusack’s portrayal of Olivia to be lively. She imbued Olivia with a freshness I really liked.