The full title of the play is Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Subtitles for plays were fashionable in the Elizabethan era, and though some editors place The Merchant of Venice's alternative title, The Jew of Venice, as a subtitle, this is the only Shakespeare play to bear one when first published.[10]
The play was probably finished between 1600 and 1601, a period suggested by the play's referencing of events that happened during that time. A law student, John Manningham, who was studying in the Middle Temple in London, described the performance on 2 February 1602 (Candlemas) which took place in the hall of the Middle Temple at the formal end of Christmastide in the year's calendar, and to which students were invited.[11] This was the first recorded public performance of the play. The play was not published until its inclusion in the First Folio in 1623.
