14 SEPTEMBER 1996, Page 27

Elizabethan era

Sir: In his review of Antonia Fraser's book on the Gunpowder Plot (Books, 31 August), Peter Vansittart refers to interpreters of the Jacobean era for whom Macbeth is more typical of it than Twelfth Night. Whoever these unnamed interpreters are, they must be pretty ignorant. Twelfth Night is an Eliza- bethan, not a Jacobean play. The diary of John Manningham describes a performance of the play in the Middle Temple Hall on 2 February 1602; and it is generally agreed that it was probably written the year before. Robert Jeffcoate

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