Malvolio

“ MALVOLIO. Fool, there was never man so notoriously abused; I am as well in my wits, fool, as thou art.
CLOWN. But as well? then you are mad indeed, if you be no better in your wits than a fool.
MALVOLIO. They have here propertied me; keep me in darkness, send ministers to me, asses, and do all they can to face me out of my wits.
CLOWN. Advise you what you say: the minister is here.—Malvolio, thy wits the heavens restore! endeavour thyself to sleep, and leave thy vain bibble-babble.
MALVOLIO. Sir Topas,—
CLOWN. Maintain no words with him, good fellow. Who, I, sir? not I, sir. ”

“ It is my lady. To whom should this be?”
The letter was written in the most nonsensical terms, but Malvolio at once began to puzzle a meaning into it.
“Jove knows I love: But who? Lips do not move; No man must know.”
“‘No man must know,’” he echoed. “If this should be thee, Malvolio!”
“I may command where I adore; But silence, like a Lucrece knife, With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore, M, O, A, I, doth sway my life.”
Malvolio pondered deeply over these mystic lines. “I may command where [Pg 192] I adore” was, of course, quite simple. Olivia might command him, for he was her servant. ”

“ When Malvolio himself appeared, they paid no more heed to him than they had done to Maria, and only answered his rebuking words by each singing at him in turn snatches of different songs.
“My masters, are you mad, or what are you?” he cried, with just indignation. “Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an alehouse of my lady’s house that you squeak out your vulgar catches at the top of your voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?”
“We did keep time, sir, in our catches,” said Sir Toby. “Shut up!” ”

“ Olivia was very sad when Viola, or the young page Cesario, as she thought her, went away saying that no woman should ever win his heart; and feeling that Malvolio’s grave dignity just suited her present mood, she asked for her steward.
“He is coming, madam, but in very strange manner,” said the naughty Maria. “He is surely possessed, madam.”
“Why, what is the matter? Doth he rave?”
“No, madam, he does nothing but smile. Your ladyship were best to have some guard about you if he come; for, sure, the man has something wrong with his wits.” ”

“ The more fool you, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.
OLIVIA.
What think you of this fool, Malvolio? doth he not mend?
MALVOLIO.
Yes; and shall do, till the pangs of death shake him. Infirmity, that decays the wise, doth ever make the better fool.
CLOWN.
God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox; but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool. ”

“ Olivia is in an unreal mood of mourning for her brother. Grief is a destroying passion. Olivia makes it a form of self-indulgence, or one sweet the more to attract flies to her. Malvolio is in an unreal mood of self-importance. Long posing at the head of ceremony has given him the faith that ceremony, of which he is the head, is the whole of life. This faith deludes him into a life of day-dreams, common enough among inactive clever people, but dangerous to the indulger, as all things are that distort the mental vision. ”

“ What part does the fool play in the game, and why? Note his private grudge against Malvolio. Is it a dramatic mistake that even the heroine is made the butt of these merry-makers? Trace Fabian's part in the duelling plot against Sir Andrew and Viola. Do these plots recoil in any way against the plotters? Sir Toby and Sir Andrew both get some home-truths from Malvolio while they are eavesdropping, while for Fabian and Maria these thrusts of Malvolio's are just as good fun as that which the knights enjoy better. How does some of the later fun recoil against Toby and Sir Andrew? ”

“ Malvolio. One Sir Andrew—
Sir Andrew. I knew, 'twas I; for many do call me fool.
Malvolio. What employment have we here? [Taking up the letter.]
The letter and his comments on it are equally good. If poor Malvolio's treatment afterwards is a little hard, poetical justice is done in the uneasiness which Olivia suffers on account of her mistaken attachment to Cesario, as her insensibility to the violence of the Duke's passion is atoned for by the discovery of Viola's concealed love of him.
THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA This is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. ”

“ Angelo, the would-be Puritan ruler, was a “false seemer,” Malvolio was a “chough.” The peculiar virtues of the English middle class, its courage and sheepishness; its good conduct and respect for duties; its religious sense and cocksure narrow-mindedness, held no attraction for Shakespeare, and, armoured in snobbishness, he utterly missed what a knowledge of the middle classes might have given him.
Let us take one instance of his loss. Though he lived in an age of fanaticism, he never drew a fanatic or reformer, never conceived a man as swimming against the stream of his time. ”

“ Not less appropriately is the comparison used of Malvolio, who, as Maria said, had been “yonder i’ the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour.” As the three concealed onlookers watch him strutting down the walk, talking to himself, they can [Pg 89] scarcely restrain themselves. Fabian entreats silence:
O, peace! ”

“ The man seemed to tread upon air, to taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to mate Hyperion. O! shake not the castles of his pride—endure yet for a season, bright moments of confidence—"stand still ye watches of the element," that Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord—but fate and retribution say no—I hear the mischievous titter of Maria—the witty taunts of Sir Toby—the still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight—the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked—and "thus the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, "brings in his revenges." ”

“ A spirited enactment of Malvolio, of Falstaff, or of Richard Crookback has the high merit of faithfully setting forth humanity, though in certain whimsical or distorted phases; but we are more profoundly enriched by the portrayal of higher types. ”

“ No manager in those days would have dreamed of giving it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons: when Bensley was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling; but dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an over-stretched morality. ”

“ The disease of overmuch prosperity in the palaces of Illyria seems set over against the sanity of adversity in the forest of Arden. Viola, in her disguises as Cesario, has a harder task than the banished Rosalind; for instead of assisting at her own wooing, she is required to plead as an envoy of love 656 against herself. In place of the dilettante egotist Jaques, who would range through all experiences, we have here the solemn self-lover, Malvolio, pinnacled in his own sense of importance and his code of formal propriety, yet toppling from his heights to so grotesque a fall. ”

“ Then comes, to my idea, the triumphal music of Malvolio. This is quickly followed by a label, Act ii., Scene 3, Sir Toby, "Shall we rouse the night owl in a catch?" and for a few moments we have bright sounds of revelry; but very swiftly the music gets slow and piano, and presently we return to Act i., and the words on the score are, "O, she that hath a heart of that frame, To pay this debt but to a brother," etc. This subject is very beautiful, and admirably portrays Orsino's love for Cesario. After this comes a bright, melodious episode working up to a fortissimo climax. ”

“ Malvolio’s temper is never superseded by another passion; Antony often gives way to self-chastisement or grief, yet fundamentally obeys his passion; Angelo is transformed into another man by yielding to lust and still another by yielding to penitence at the conclusion. Thus the degree of consistency varies with the individuals, yet even with the most consistent characters, the interest is not directed to incidental characteristics such as physique, but to the passions to which they yield. Only here and there do we find a man of balanced temperament who does not yield to passion. ”

“ Of the minor characters the fool is minor only through his station and unimportance in the plot; he really occupies much space in the play and in fact pervades it. How is Antonio connected with the plot? What traits of his does the play bring out? Is his fondness for Sebastian unnatural? How is he concerned in the foolery of the play? Is he necessary to the plot? As the fool represents the merry-making spirit of the play, so Malvolio stands for the dupes of it. ”

“ The clown in this play is a domestic or hired fool, in the service of Olivia. He is specifically termed "an allowed fool," and "Feste the jester, a fool that the lady Olivia's father took much delight in." Malvolio likewise speaks of him as "a set fool." Of his dress it is impossible to speak correctly. If the fool's expression, "I will impeticoat thy gratility," be the original language, he must have been habited accordingly. Mr. Ritson has asserted that he has neither coxcomb nor bauble, deducing his argument from the want of any allusion to them. ”

“ In his next play, the typical, solemn, and self-righteous Puritan is held up to ridicule in the Don Quixote-like personage of the moralising and pompous Malvolio, who is launched upon a billowy sea of burlesque situations. Of course the poet goes to work with the greatest circumspection. [Pg 232] Sir Toby has made some inquiry about Malvolio, to which Maria answers (ii. 3) :—
"Maria. ”

“ That is, I told her I had one more possibility. If that failed, I would let her know. This she informed me I could do by telephone, as Boyd's name was in the book. If it didn't fail ... But as to that she forgot to exact a promise, just as she forgot to tell me her new address. Like most shy people who dash out of their shyness for some adventure too bold for the audacious, she retreated as suddenly. Springing into her motor as soon as we had arrived at a temporary decision, she drove away, leaving me still at a loss as to whether or not I was Malvolio. ”

“ If you desire the spleen, and will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me: yon gull Malvolio is turned heathen, a very renegado; for there is no Christian, that means to be saved by believing rightly, can ever believe such impossible passages of grossness. He's in yellow stockings.
Sir To. And cross-gartered?
Mar. Most villainously; like a pedant that keeps a school i' the church.—I have dogg'd him, like his murderer: He does obey every point of the letter that I dropped to betray him. He does smile his face into [pg 46] more lines, than are in a map: you have not seen such a thing as 'tis. ”

“ He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, [4] and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw. There must have been some shadow of worth about the man; he must have been something more than a mere vapour—a thing of straw, or Jack in office—before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending him upon a courting errand to Olivia. There was some consonancy (as he would say) in the undertaking, or the jest would have been too bold even for that house of misrule. There was "example for it," said Malvolio; "the lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the wardrobe." ”

“ We always have, as she did, some vice which we hate worse than others. The one that is damned is generally the only one which would put us to discomfort to practise. But humor can make for a time only those vices companionable which turn a man into his own worst enemy and raise no tragic threat against the State.
Malvolio, the steward of Olivia's household, is prized by that lady for his grave and punctilious disposition. He discharges his office carefully and in a tone of some superiority, for his mind is above his estate. ”

“ My master loves her dearly; I, poor fool! am just as fond of him; and she, mistaken, seems to doat on me! What will become of this? O time, you must untangle it, not I! It is too hard a knot for me to unravel.” [Pg 186]
A Dream of Greatness
The disagreement always existing between the steward Malvolio and the riotous members of Olivia’s household broke at last into warfare. On the night of the day when Duke Orsino’s messenger came to Olivia, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew chose to sit up late, drinking and singing. ”

“ A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies."
"Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius," observed the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; "how do you characterize his advice to Laertes?" ”

“ The Professor was a well-known authority on these matters.
"Of course there was a King Heremon of Ireland," answered the Professor quite petulantly—as if the Commander had wanted to know if there had ever been a Julius Caesar or a Napoleon. "And so there was a Queen Harbundia. Malvina is always spoken of in connection with her."
"What did she do?" inquired Commander Raffleton. They both of them seemed to be oblivious of Malvina's presence. ”

“ And sure enough, in the corner of the chest lay the rest of Malvolia's spell--a row of little, old-fashioned, dusty words; the words: "Until he finds someone brave enough to marry him."
So the good poodle learned the words by heart, thanked the Giant, and hurried home with the message. When he came to the King's palace, he ran, barking with joy, right into the King's own room. There he saw the unhappy parents.
"Have you found the last of the sentence?" cried the Queen.
"Yes," said Poldo. "The spell will end when the prince marries." ”