Malvolio’s Defense

by David P. Gontar (September 2014)

I.  Recollections of Mr. Malvolio

But how is he deficient? Let us count the ways.

1.  Malvolio is hostile.

We are introduced in Act 1, Sc. 5 when Malvolio is asked by Olivia about Feste the jester, a clown who had been employed by her late father. Feste is disenchanted because his wit is not appreciated by Olivia, who is in interminable mourning for her recently deceased brother.  These are the first words we hear from him.

OLIVIA

What do you think 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.
(I, v, 69-73)

FESTE

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

How say you to that, Malvolio?
(I, v, 78)

Unfazed, Malvolio continues his unprovoked tirade.

MALVOLIO

I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a
 barren rascal. I saw him put down the other day with
an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone.
Look you now, he’s out of his guard already. Unless
you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged.
I protest I take these wise men that crow so at these
set kind of fools no better than the fools’ zanies.

OLIVIA

O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste
with a distempered appetite. To be generous, guiltless,
and of a free disposition is to take those things for
birdbolts that you deem cannon bullets. There is no
slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but
rail; nor no railing in a known discreet man, though
he do nothing but reprove.

FESTE

Now Mercury indue thee with leasing, for thou
speakest well of fools.
(I, v, 74-94)

Malvolio insults Feste for lack of intelligence and belittles those who might appreciate his banter, that is, the nobility of the household (Olivia, Sir Toby Belch, her uncle, and his friend, Sir Andrew Aguecheek). Of course, no one is responsible for their measure of intelligence. That is something to remember. And for a servant to deride the houseguests in this manner is  rude and impertinent. Finally, Malvolio seems to think that on account of having been demoralized by a rival clown, Feste is deserving of further humiliation in front of Lady Olivia. That is logic twisted by hate.

2.  Malvolio is petulant and dishonest

MALVOLIO

(offering a ring)

She returns this ring to you,
sir. You might have saved me my pains to have taken
it away yourself. She adds, moreover, that you should
put your lord into a desperate assurance she will none
of him. And one thing more: that you be never so
hardy to come again in his affairs, unless it be to report
your lord’s taking of this. Receive it so.

VIOLA

She took no ring of me. I’ll none of it.

MALVOLIO

Come, sir, you peevishly threw it to her, and
her will is it should be so returned.

(He throws the ring down)

If it be worth stooping for, there it lies, in your eye; if
not, be it his that finds it.
(II, i, 5-16, following the Stratford Town Edition, 1904)

3.  Malvolio is Resentful and Accusatory

In Act 2, Sc. 3, when Sir Toby, Feste and Sir Andrew sing noisy tavern ballads late at night, they are angrily chastised by Malvolio, who in the process unjustly accuses Maria of allowing or encouraging the disturbance.

MALVOLIO

Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour
at anything more than contempt you would not give
means for this uncivil rule. She shall know of it, by
this hand.
(II, iii, 117-120)

SIR TOBY

Art any more than a steward?
Dost thou think because thou art virtuous
there shall be no more cakes and ale?
(II, iii, 109-111)

4.  Malvolio is a Snob and a Gold Digger

This brings us to Act 2, Sc. 5.

MALVOLIO

Having been three months married to her,
sitting in my state —
Calling my officers about me, in my branched
velvet gown, having come from a day-bed where I have
left Olivia sleeping —
 And then to have the humour of state and —
after a demure travel of regard, telling them I know
my place, as I would they should do theirs — to ask for
my kinsman Toby.
Seven of my people with an obedient start
make out for him. I frown the while, and perchance
wind up my watch, or play with my —
some rich jewel. Toby approaches; curtsies there
to me.
I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my
familiar smile with an austere regard of control —
Saying, ‘Cousin Toby, my fortunes, having cast
me on your niece, give me this prerogative of speech’ —
You must amend your drunkenness.’
Besides, you waste the treasure of your time
with a foolish knight’ —
(II, v, 42-75, with omissions)

The challenge, of course, is for those who have the misfortune to find themselves feelingly impersonated by Malvolio and obliquely pilloried. To recognize yourself in such a character onstage may be an uncomfortable moment. In that respect it is interesting to attend to certain critical writers and observe the lengths to which they go to obfuscate the obvious and rehabilitate a cad. 

II.  Malvolio’s Defense

1.  Charles Lamb

Lamb is waist-deep in error from the very start:

Lamb continues. 

overstretched morality.”

Lamb is wrong.

 to the man, not mock or affected . . . .  His quality is at best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor contemptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his station, probably not much above his deserts.”

He has his nose in the air, as though he breathed an atmosphere more refined and salubrious than other creatures. Remember this?  

MALVOLIO

Go hang yourselves, all.  You are idle shallow
things, I am not of your element. You shall know more
hereafter.
(III, iv, 121-123)

commissioned to restore to Cesario) bespeaks a generosity of birth and feeling.”

greatness seems never to desert him.”

And there it is: for Charles Lamb, Malvolio, at least as portrayed by Mr. Bensley, is a tragic hero. His comic aspect is but an apparition, you see. Considering his dignity, his gravitas, his brave morality, his generosity of birth and feeling, there can be little doubt that he is a genuinely tragic figure, even though he is seems quite ordinary and endured no more than a slap on the wrist  by spending a day in a dark chamber whose purpose was therapeutic, not punitive. The truth is, there is a fourth category of greatness: Some lunge at greatness, grasp it for an instant, and fall on their faces. 

ORSINO

O fellow, come, the song we had last night.
Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain.
The spinsters, and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
Do chant it. It is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.
(II, iii, 41-47)

Crystal and Crystal in their Shakespearean glossary provide this entry.

silly (adj.)

1.  helpless, defenceless, vulnerable;
2.  feeble, frail, weak;
3.  foolish, stupid, ludicrous<span style="line-height: 1.6em; font-size: 12px;">;
4.  simple, lowly, humble<span style="line-height: 1.6em; font-size: 12px;">;
5.  trifling, trivial, scanty.
(Crystal, 400, emphases added)

2.  Harold C. Goddard

And yet there have been critics so incapable of shaking off their theatre mood as to suggest that in this play Shakespeare is unreservedly on the side of revelry, of cakes and ale as against “virtue,” of drunkenness and riot and quarreling as against sobriety and decency and some semblance of order.

* * * *

In  their dislike of Malvolio they forget that he is merely carrying out Olivia’s orders, in however annoying a manner. She objects quite as much as he to having her house turned into a bedlam at any and all hours . . . . (Goddard, 296)

Pretty nearly everybody in [the play] but Viola and Sebastian . . . is at the extreme point where from excess of something or other he is about to be converted into something else. Sir Toby, who is the feudal retainer at his vanishing point, is in the “third degree of drink,” drowned in it, namely. (sic) (Those who liken him to Falstaff are in some still higher degree of obfuscation.) (Goddard, 297)

What could this mean? No one would argue that Sir Toby and Sir John are fungible commodities, but they are both intoxicating characters not only in themselves and their imbibing, but also in their impact on us, the audience. They are both figures of Bacchic festivity and lords of misrule, as recent scholarship has shown. How would we go about distinguishing them when their conduct renders them so similar? Goddard dismisses the inquiry with a stroke of the pen. That is a mark against him and his contentions.

Held hostage by his own logic, Goddard must pass on to condemn Maria.

Maria’s third degree is of another sort. She is a lively, alert, resourceful, mocking person. Her vitality and intelligence (to call it that) have, in her servile position, made her ambitious and envious, especially so of the steward whose merits her mistress prizes so highly. It is important to realize that it is not just because he is Malvolio that she hates him. She would have resented anyone in his place. “I can hardly forebear hurling things at him.” The remark is a giveaway. (Goddard, 298)

Malvolio and his function in the play seem plain enough during its performance or at first reading. He is simply the antitype of the revelers, their excess drawn out equally in the opposite direction. If they are levity, he is gravity — dignity, decency, decorum, servility and severity in the cause of “good order,” carried to the third degree and beyond — and as such fair game for his tormentors. No more than this is necessary to make Malvolio a success on the stage. But that more is possible even there, and much more in the imagination of a reader who reads deeper (sic), is shown in Charles Lamb’s famous reminiscences of Bensley . . . . Lamb’s main point, it will be remembered, is that Malvolio is not essentially ludicrous, that his pride is neither mock nor affected — and so not a fit object, as such, to excite laughter. He thinks the man had it in him to be brave, honorable, accomplished. Maria calls him a puritan, but quickly takes it back and calls him a time pleaser instead. She could not have been more mistaken. Malvolio is a man of principle rather, and being, like all “men of principle,” lacking in imagination in its creative sense, is all the more prone to become a victim of it in its primitive form. (Goddard, 299)

And so the argument that was circling the drain in 1823 continues its downward spiral in 1951. There remain echoes of this bizarre and perverse view even today.

Lamb found that he admired Malvolio’s lunacy, because he understood Malvolio’s desire to be Olivia’s equal, and therefoe didn’t begrudge Malvolio his moments of delusion; in that, I think that Lamb acknowledges openly what many viewers feel in secret — an admiration for someone willing to commit themselves to attaining their inmost fantasy, no matter how misguided. (Kelly R. Fineman, “Twelfth Night:  The Malvolio Problem,” online)

3.  Conclusion

WORKS CITED:

, Penguin Books, 2002

Harold C. Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, The University of Chicago Press, 1951

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Hazel Barnes, trans., Philosophical Library, 1956

William Shakespeare The Complete Works, 2d ed., S. Wells and G. Taylor, eds., Oxford University Press, Clarendon, 2005

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Stratford Town edition, 1904, reprinted by Barnes and Noble Books, 1994

 

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