T HIS ESSAY CAME INTO FOCUS OVER THE COURSE OF a National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on Shakespearean staging during which I saw the same production of Twelfth Night a good seven or eight times.' Despite my familiarity with every twist and turn in the production, I found myself deeply moved by the ending of each performance. What touched me especially was the recognition scene between and Sebastian; indeed, this moment defined for me the final scene's emotional character, resonating even through Feste's song to make it more poignant than was ever before the case in my experience. Much of my response was due, I realized, to the simple fact that the director chose to follow an internal stage direction at the moment of a direction that has been largely ignored in both commentary and in productions I had previously seen. After the extended, and not entirely necessary, exchange of identifying clues that clearly and selfconsciously delights in comic convention (My father had a mole upon his brow [5.1.240]2), the text indicates that interrupts the expected conclusion with a gesture of repulse. Though she signals the arrival of the critical moment with a conditional clause that seemingly points to imminent discovery and an ecstatic embraceIf nothing lets to make us happy both, /But this my masculine usurp'd attire (11. 247-48) -she suddenly breaks her syntax and provides a visible cue for blocking with the interjection Do not embrace me, till each circumstance / Of place, time, fortune do cohere and jump / That I am Viola (11. 249-51). Because her conditions for their embrace immediately follow the negative command as part of one syntactical unit, her rebuff of Sebastian might appear merely a minor bump; this, and the comic wish to witness and/or stage a climactic reunion, may explain why this gesture of rejection has been so consistently ignored or fudged. Noting that it has been usual in his experience to see and Sebastian move gradually closer to one another during the duologue, and, if not to embrace, at least to touch at some point selected as a moment of full recognition, as formidable an authority as Stanley Wells has remarked, perhaps the direction is one that