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Twelfth Night

From Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, by E. Nesbit (1907)

This reader is drawn from E. Nesbit's 1907 retelling of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, first performed around 1601. Nesbit, best known for her children's novels, rendered Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies in prose for young readers, preserving the essential plot, themes, and some of the Bard's most memorable language. The play is a comedy of mistaken identity, exploring love, disguise, constancy, and the distance between what we show the world and what we feel within. It remains one of Shakespeare's most performed works and a cornerstone of the English literary canon, valued for its wit, its compassion, and its insight into the human heart. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised.

Band

Red · Complex language and analysisTypical starting range: ages 15–17

Length

long · about 1372 words in 5 sections · 2 pictures

Source

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare, E. Nesbit and William Shakespeare

First published

1907

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script
• · Teacher’s Edition (members)

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.

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