Key Passages

The Folio text of 1623 (see Further Reading, p. 189 ) did not include a list of dramatis personae. The first list appeared in Nicholas Rowe’s 1709 edition of Shakespeare’s Works . The following list includes only the characters who appear in the Key Passages below. The remaining characters are: the sea captain (and sailors from the wrecked ship) who tells Viola about Illyria and its inhabitants in Act 1, Scene 2; the priest who marries Olivia and Sebastian after they exit at the end of Act 4, Scene 3 and then testifies that he has joined them in matrimony in Act 5, Scene 1; and a handful of generically named officers, servants and attendants in Olivia and Orsino’s households.