Student John Manningham’s recollection of a 1602 performance of Twelfth Night shows that he judged plays, first on their faithfulness to their Latin sources and secondly on their success as entertainment. However Shakespeare chose his sources freely, gifting his plays with insight and his characters with depth and complexity. Combined with the virtuosity of their poetic language, these qualities imparted a lasting value to his work. If we pause to observe and think, Twelfth Night generates a deeper understanding of our own and others’ complicated beings. This is the best gift that Shakespeare the playwright offers us.

Orsino

“The very opening of the play links Orsino’s love for Olivia to decadence, sensual self-indulgence and inconstancy.”
(Cedric Watts, ed. Twelfth Night, p.12)

Orsino ‘s famous opening speech reveals him to be both changeable and a lover of sensual pleasures. He begins by craving music, “the food of love,”, so that “excess” will destroy his appetite for it (1-4); he demands that a “sweet” theme with “a dying fall” be repeated (lines 4-7); he ends the concert when he finds it less “sweet” than before. Orsino’s references to “appetite,” “dying,” and “the sea” adapt metaphors of courtly love poetry, a medieval tradition that Elizabethan poets, such as Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, and Shakespeare himself, were then in the process of vitalising and enriching. Orsino’s perception of love’s volatility–its ability to fall “into abatement and low price/ Even in a minute” (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 11-14)–foreshadows the sudden extinction in Act 5 of his love for Olivia. His closing word-play on Fancy (Imagination): “So full of shapes is fancy/ That she alone is high fantastical.” (lines 14-15), acknowledges love’s power to delude, to which, ironically, he himself has fallen victim.

Orsino, far more in love with language, music, love and himself than he is with Olivia, or will be with Viola, tells himself (and us) that love is too hungry ever to be satisfied with any person whatsoever. (Bloom, pp. 229-230)

When the gentleman-attendant Valentine reports Olivia’s refusal to admit him, Orsino’s response strengthens the doubts about the truthfulness of his love. His pun, “hart/heart“ and metaphors of hunting and killing amount to a fantasy of dominance and exclusive possession:

How will she love, when the rich golden shaft
Hath killed the flock of all affections else
That live in her; when liver, brain and heart,
These sovereign thrones, are all supplied and filled—
Her sweet perfections—with one self king!
                                                       (Act 1, Scene 1, lines 37-41)

This outpouring points to the difference between an egoistic and a heart-felt love.

Critics have repeated the view fifty times that Orsino is more in love with love than with Olivia.
(J.M. Lothian and T.W. Craik, eds. Twelfth Night. Arden Shakespeare. London, Methuen, 1975, p. lii; see Bloom, 1998, above)

Orsino closes Scene 1 when he sends his courtiers ahead to “sweet beds of flowers:/ Love-thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers” (lines 42-43). The image is one of idleness and decadence.

In the forty-two lines of Act 1, Scene 4, we learn more about Orsino through his relationship with Cesario-Viola:

1. Over the three days of their acquaintance Orsino has adopted Cesario-Viola as his favourite.
2. His haste leads Viola to doubt Orsino’s constancy (lines 5-7). Valentine reassures her, but in Act 5 Viola’s perception will prove true.
3. At lines 28-35 Orsino explains why he chooses Cesario-Viola as his proxy in courting Olivia. What ironies related to “Cesario’s” gender can you find in Orsino’s depiction of him/her?
4.  What revelation about Viola’s feelings does the scene’s closing couplet (lines 45-46) provide? What is “a barful strife”?

Act 2, Scene 4 gives weight to Orsino’s characteristics demonstrated in Act 1. He appreciates music because it soothes his feelings, not for its power to uplift and enlighten. He enjoys entertaining his court–Curio, Valentine and Cesario-Viola–with his role of lover. He also enjoys watching himself perform this role–he is a narcissist. Orsino claims to be a model for “true lovers”–“unstaid and skittish” in all his feelings, except in faithfulness to the “constant image” of his beloved. Ironically, he states this, not to his current love Olivia, but to Cesario-Viola, whom he is destined to marry. In Twelfth Night his agreement with Viola, that men’s fancies are “more giddy and infirm/ More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn/ Than women’s are” (lines 38-40), will prove to be true.

The clown Feste is Orsino’s second tutor in the same scene. Although moving, the song, “Come away, come away death” exaggerates the sufferings of the courtly lover, Orsino’s assumed role, to the borders of comedy.  Mahood reads Orsino’s response to the song–his casual giving of money–as an insult that Feste resents, and their exchange is barbed on both sides. Dismissed, Feste seizes his chance to speak truth to power:

Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere; for that’s it that makes a good voyage of nothing. Farewell. (Act 2, Scene 4, lines 80-88)

Feste’s metaphors of fabric, gemstone and voyaging target Orsino’s changeableness, in love as in music. Like his profound discussions with Cesario-Viola, they prepare the audience to accept the transfer of his affections at the end of the play.

Writers on Twelfth Night have theorised Orsino’s “amiable erotic lunacy” (Bloom 230) in other ways:

• The aimlessness of Orsino’s “fancy,” i.e. the feeling he mistakes as his love for Olivia, can be defined in relation to the theory of humours, discussed above under “Context,” which is a satiric target in Twelfth Night. Dover Wilson diagnoses Orsino’s changeableness as a symptom of lover’s melancholy, a “humour” that Robert Burton was to discuss at length in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621; Shakespeare’s Happy Comedies. London: Faber, 1962, p. 170). 
• Another way of understanding Orsino’s subjection to the “high fantastical” is in terms of a mask. According to Joseph H. Summers, Orsino is like other characters in mistaking a mask, in his case the poetic ideal of courtly lover that he enthusiastically adopts, as his true self. (“The Masks of Twelfth Night,” in Twentieth Century Interpretations of Twelfth Night, ed. Walter N. King, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1968, p. 16).

The insights above, into a narcissistic and self-deluded Orsino, should not be taken too far. Twelfth Night appeals because it encourages audiences to share vicariously in the joy of erotic love. C. L. Barber suggests: “Can it be that we enjoy the play so much simply because it is a wish-fulfilment presented so skillfully that we do not notice that our hearts are duping our heads?” (p. 277). Orsino’s characterisation skillfully combines love’s silliness in action with love’s reality as feeling. His status as a worthy love object for Viola is supported by characters who testify to his virtues. The Captain describes him as “A noble duke, in nature as in name” (Act 1, Scene 2, line 26). Olivia expands this assessment:

I suppose him virtuous, know him noble,
Of great estate, of fresh and stainless youth,
In voices well divulged, free, learned, and valiant,
And in dimension and the shape of nature
A gracious person. (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 247-251)

Beyond his lover’s “lunacy,” “humour,” “melancholy” or “mask,” Orsino is humanised for the audience by his affectionate conversations with the “youth” Cesario.

After his departure in Act 2, Scene 4, Orsino next enters Twelfth Night in Act 5, when, accompanied by members of his household, he encounters at Olivia’s house first Feste; next his enemy Antonio, who is under arrest; and lastly Olivia herself, whom he greets with, “Here comes the countess; now heaven walks on earth” (line 96). When Olivia insists that she loves Cesario-Viola, Orsino in his jealousy contemplates a revenge that threatens to turn Twelfth Night into a tragedy:

But this your minion, whom I know you love,
And whom, by heaven I swear, I tender dearly,
Him will I tear out of that cruel eye
Where he sits crowned in his master’s spite.
[to Viola] Come, boy, with me. My thoughts are ripe in mischief.
I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love
To spite a raven’s heart within a dove. (lines 127-34)

Further sequential reports of “Cesario” distract the audience from Orsino at his spiteful worst:

• The Priest testifies that two hours ago he (the Priest) sanctified a wedding between “Cesario” and Olivia;
• Sir Andrew enters wounded, claiming that “Cesario” has broken his head;
• Sir Toby enters with the same claim.

This is the comic nadir of Twelfth Night, the moment when Viola-Cesario is most at risk. Sebastian’s entrance resolves the contretemps completely and at once. With Cesario’s identity and gender revealed, Orsino reminds her that she has said “a thousand times/ Thou never shouldst love woman like to me” (lines 279-280). This reminder of the affectionate conversations that Orsino has enjoyed with his “page,” clears the way for his proposal, urged by Olivia:

Madam [to Olivia], I am most apt t’embrace your offer.
[to Viola] Your master quits you, and for your service done him–
So much against the mettle of your sex,
So far beneath your soft and tender breeding–
And, since you called me master for so long,
Here is my hand; you shall from this time be
Your master’s mistress. 
(Act 5, Scene 1, lines 336-43)

Like Olivia’s acceptance of Sebastian, this is passionate, but, in the light of Orsino’s earlier threat to kill Viola, somewhat sudden. Genre (romantic comedy) dictates the ending. Watts’ sympathy (p. 13) is with Orsino: “While wishing [Orsino] luck, we may recall the Clown’s remark that “fools are as like husbands as pilchards are to herrings–the husband’s the bigger” (Act 3, Scene 1, lines 36-37).

OLIVIA

Like Orsino, Olivia undergoes rapid changes in her progress through Shakespeare’s script. Her foolish “humour” or “lunacy” in planning to spend seven youthful years in mourning is exposed in an early dialogue with Feste:

Feste: ….Good Madonna, give me leave to prove you a fool.
Olivia: Can you do it?
Feste: Dexteriously, good Madonna.
Olivia: Make your proof.
Feste: I must catechize you for it, Madonna. Good my mouse of virtue, answer me.
Olivia: Well, sir, for want of other idleness, I’ll bide your proof.
Feste: Good Madonna, why mourn’st thou?
Olivia: Good fool, for my brother’s death.
Feste: I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.
Olivia: I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
Feste: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen. (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 55-70)

Courting her on Orsino’s behalf, Cesario-Viola’s first sight of Olivia’s unveiled face repeats the message of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a young man, that such beauty should be preserved through children:

‘Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white
Nature’s own sweet and cunning hand laid on,
Lady, you are the cruellest she alive,
If you will lead these graces to the grave
And leave the world no copy. (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 230-232).

In a witty response Olivia offers to make itemised lists of her beauty for posterity. The fault that Viola accuses her of is pride (line 250)–vanity has deluded Olivia into imagining that she is not subject to time. But as their conversation proceeds, an alternative lunacy–love for Cesari0-Viola–ends Olivia’s mourning madness: “Even so quickly may one catch the plague?” she asks (line 284). Quick-witted, she sends Malvolio after Cesario-Viola to return a ring that she claims he/she has given her as a love-token from Orsino. This makes Olivia’s character-advantage over Orsino obvious–her love at once overcomes her pride. Her words closing Act 1 follow Viola in committing the outcome to Fate. Being less philosophically inclined, however, Olivia prays also that Fate will bring about her love’s fulfilment:

Fate, show thy force. Ourselves we do not owe,
What is decreed must be, and be this so. (lines 317-318; my italics)

Olivia and Viola next converse in Act 3, Scene 1, lines 81-161, a dialogue of dramatic irony and comic cross-purposes, in which the love-stricken speakers are equally appealing. At their next meeting (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 209-226), Olivia’s passion reaches its zenith, and she ends by saying: “A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell” (line 226). Olivia has reshaped her melancholy humour arising from the deaths in her family as lover’s melancholy. (See the discussion of humours in Chapter 1: Context)

Yet, in a comic exposé of love’s dangers and deceptiveness, in Act 4 Olivia intervenes to prevent the sword fight between Sebastian (Viola’s twin) and Sir Toby (Scene 1, lines 44-65). She then courts Sebastian in Viola-Cesario’s place. Smitten by her beauty and courage, a puzzled Sebastian humours Olivia’s mistake, and their wedding provides the climax to Act 4. Sebastian, who can hardly believe his luck, promises to be faithful to his wedding vows:

I’ll follow this good man and go with you,
And, having sworn truth, ever will be true. (Act 4, Scene 3, lines 33-34).

When the confusions surrounding the twins climax in Act 5, Olivia, like Sebastian, proves true: she rejects Orsino and stays faithful to her marriage. Orsino speaks her acceptance of a fait accompli, pointing to Sebastian’s “right noble blood,” and defining the wedding, in an oxymoron, as “this most happy wreck” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 276-78).

As well as in the downs and ups of love, Olivia’s character reveals itself in interactions with her hangers-on and servants. In love she is passionate and out-spoken, but  as the head of her household she is a responsible adherent of the “Golden Mean“:

• She warns Sir Toby and Sir Andrew against their noisy drinking bouts, but chides Malvolio also for his joyless strictness.
• She apologises for “the most extracting frenzy of mine own” (love) that has kept her from paying attention to the plight of the “mad” Malvolio (Act 5, Scene 1, line 295).
• Recognising Maria’s handwriting in the letter that caused Malvolio’s “mad” behaviour and interment, Olivia promises him just reparation: “Thou shalt be both the plaintiff and the judge/ Of thine own cause” (lines 367-377).

Viola 

SEBASTIAN: ….”she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair.”
(Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 1, lines 28-29).

“The great and secret charm of Twelfth Night is the character of Viola.”
(William Hazlitt. Characters of Shakespeare’s Plays. London: Taylor & Hessey, 1817)

In contrast with Orsino’s extravagant professions of love and Olivia’s idealistic mourning, true feeling uncontaminated by a “humour” enters Twelfth Night with Viola. Equipoise, a natural inner harmony that governs her dealings with the world, creates Viola as an instrument for measuring the humours, lunacies, selfishness and self-deceptions of other characters. Despite her disguise as Cesario, Viola’s love for Orsino is fully real to the audience.

“The ‘high fantastical’ Orsino perhaps attracts [Viola] as an opposite; his hyperboles complement her reticences.” (Bloom 232)

Viola wins the audience’s favour from her first landing on the coast of Illyria, when she maintains a rational hope that her brother Sebastian has survived the shipwreck. Her active response to a dire situation–to enter Orsino’s service disguised as a boy–contrasts with the passivity of her peers: Orsino enacts his fantasy-love for Olivia through messengers; Olivia’s prolonged mourning for her father and brother shuts out life’s demands, but also its opportunities. Together with Feste the most mobile character in Twelfth Night, Viola appears in both indoor and outdoor venues.

Bloom stresses that Viola adopts her male disguise from necessity, as “a way of going underground,” and not, like Rosalind, as an act of liberation. Viola gravitates to a court, Rosalind to a forest. Like other Twelfth Night characters, she is subject to changing circumstances. Unlike others–Orsino, Olivia and Malvolio are all examples–, she recognises the limits of her control and surrenders to the unfolding of events. After deciding to enter Orsino’s court, she says: “What else may hap to time I will commit” (Act 1, Scene 4, line 61). This is extended when she realises that Olivia has fallen in love with her disguise as Cesario: “O time, thou must untangle this, not I!/ It is too hard a knot for me to untie” (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 41-42). This is wisdom, founded in Viola’s decision to be present in the moment.

Viola’s integrity wins the approval of the audience, who respond to the poignancy of her situation: she seeks honestly to win Olivia for the man she loves herself.

 “Viola’s great virtue is the generosity which makes her sink her own feelings in Orsino’s.” (Mahood, introduction, p. 34)

In their meeting that culminates Act 1,  Viola discovers Olivia’s beauty and also her vanity, which is not a failing of her own. Loyal to Orsino, she gives new life to the metaphors of courtly love– “groans that thunder love,” “sighs of fire” — and an oxymoron–“deadly life”– all set in a courtship fantasy of music and sound: “Write loyal cantons of contemnèd love/ And sing them loud even in the dead of night,” (lines 257-79). Unsurprisingly, Olivia is won to admiration, not of Orsino but of his messenger. When she offers to recompense him/her with a tip, Viola rejects it with a curse on the person that Olivia is destined to love. Ironically, for at this moment that person is herself (lines 291-293).

Although Viola adopts her male disguise defensively, she does so decisively, and in a manner that demonstrates both a creative engagement with life and an active imagination. If her dialogues with Orsino are sensitive and filled with longing, those with Olivia, Malvolio and Feste are combative and quick-witted. In striving to avoid a sword fight with the even more reluctant Sir Andrew, Viola invents an impressive list of excuses (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 214-301).

In all, Bloom’s emphasis on Viola’s “reticences” may be excessive. As a counter-response, you might like to apply to Viola H. B. Charlton’s analysis of Shakespeare’s women:

Shakespeare’s enthronement of woman as queen of comedy is no mere accident, and no mere gesture of conventional gallantry. Because they are women, these heroines have attributes of personality fitting them more certainly than men to shape the world towards happiness….These heroes [Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello], in effect, are out of equipoise: they lack the balance of a durable spiritual organism. It was in women that Shakespeare found this equipoise, this balance which makes personality in action a sort of ordered interplay of the major components of human nature. In his women, hand and heart and brain are fused in a vital and practical union, each contributing to the other. (Shakespearean Comedy. London: Methuen, 1938: Chapter IX)

Sebastian

Viola’s disguise as Cesario in Acts 1 and 2 of Twelfth Night challenges the rigidity of gender differences. Sebastian’s characterisation and actions in Acts 3 to 5 reinstate them.

• In Act 2, Scene 1 Sebastian appeals to the audience as Viola’s bereft and admiring brother: “… she bore a mind that envy could not but call fair. She is drowned already sir, with salt water, though I seem to drown her remembrance again with more” (Act 2, Scene 1, lines 28-31).
• After Olivia has prevented his fight with Sir Andrew and Sir Toby, Sebastian appeals to romantics in the audience as Olivia’s bemused but delighted love object: Am I dreaming? he asks, but decides: “If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!” (Act 4, Scene 1, lines 63-66). In the climax to Act 4 the audience is assured that Sebastian will be true to the wedding vows he is about to make, even though he still doesn’t understand why Olivia is determined to marry him: “I’ll follow this good man and go with you,/ And having sworn truth, ever will be true.” (Scene 3, lines 33-34).
• Finally, Sebastian’s entrance in Act 5, when everyone on stage is blaming Viola, reveals his identity as Viola’s brother and puts a dramatic end to the gender confusions (lines 219-225).

Yet, the mutual recognition of brother and sister that is the true climax of Twelfth Night also reinstates gender difference.

Antonio

Antonio is a gay man in love. His constant theme is his love for Sebastian.

In Act 2, Scene 1, when we meet them both for the first time, we discover:

• that Antonio saved Sebastian’s life by rescuing him from the shipwreck (lines 36-37);
• that being separated from Sebastian for him is worse than death: “If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant.” (lines 34-35).
• that against Sebastian’s wishes, Antonio will accompany his friend to Orsino’s court, where he has many enemies: “I do adore thee so/ That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.” (lines 46-47). Note the recurrence of the intimate pronoun “thee” in Antonio’s soliloquy after Sebastian’s departure.

Sebastian’s attitude to Antonio in Act 2 Scene 1 is warm and friendly, but the focus of Antonio’s speeches is his love for Sebastian.

The two men meet again in Act 3, Scene 3.

Involving most of the Twelfth Night characters, Act 3, Scene 4 is long and eventful. When, near the end, Antonio takes Cesario/Viola’s duel with Sir Andrew on himself, the Officers who intervene recognise him as their old enemy. As he is led away, Antonio asks the puzzled Cesario/Viola to return his purse. Unsatisfied, he draws a moral from “Sebastian’s” apparent betrayal of their friendship:

None can be called deformed but the unkind.
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks o’erflourished by the devil. (lines 387-89)

Returned to the stage as Orsino’s prisoner in Act 5, Antonio emerges as even more noble, heroic and loving. Orsino remembers the wars, when in a tiny vessel he battled Illyria’s flagship, and an Officer recalls other naval feats. In reply, Antonio explains the “witchcraft” –love for Sebastian–that drew him to Illyria’s streets, his rescue of Sebastian at sea, and his taking of “Sebastian’s” place in the duel:

His life I gave him and did thereto add
My love, without retention or restraint,
All his in dedication. For his sake
Did I expose myself, pure for his love,
Into the danger of this adverse town
Drew to defend him when he was beset…. (lines 78-83)

All this shows Viola/Cesario in a bad light, as required for Twelfth Night‘s climax. It has the secondary effect of emphasising the moral and physical strength of a man who is in love with a youth. In this, Shakespeare was surely ahead of his time.

Sebastian’s entrance at line 219 is the climax of Twelfth Night, untangling the confusions and restoring the heterosexual couples to each other. He first addresses his bride, Olivia, with “your,” “you,” but his words at seeing Antonio–“thee”–are more spontaneous and just as intimate:

Antonio! O my dear Antonio!
How have the hours racked and tortured me
Since I have lost thee! (lines 228-30)

Antonio marvels at the twins’ alikeness. They are indistinguishable, but Antonio still seeks Sebastian:

How have you made division of yourself?
An apple cleft in two is not more twin
Than these two creatures. Which is Sebastian? (lines 233-35, my italics)

These are Antonio’s last words. Performers can decide whether or not to stress the sadness of Antonio’s lost love. It resonates in the pathos of Feste’s closing song, especially the stanza beginning: “But when I came, alas to wive …” (line 420).

Malvolio

As I see it, six questions pertain to Malvolio:

1. Is Malvolio the protagonist of Twelfth Night?
2. Is Malvolio an inherently comic character?
3. Which, if any, of Malvolio’s sufferings are funny?
4. Which, if any, of Malvolio’s sufferings arouse sympathy for him?
5. Is Malvolio a virtuous character, an example of moral behaviour in an immoral or amoral Illyria?
6. Alternatively, should he be understood as a moral warning–an example of how not to think and behave?

Two streams of interpretation have flourished in the centuries since Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. These are (1) the theatrical (dominant) and (2) the scholarly (increasing in prominence since 1800).

Dedicated to engaging the public, theatre has tended to view Twelfth Night as “Malvolio’s Play.” John Manningham recalled Malvolio’s tricking and imprisonment as the most pleasurable aspects of the performance he enjoyed at the Middle Temple. Charles Macklin, the eighteenth-century “star” of Drury Lane Theatre, included Malvolio among the parts he acted with acclaim. In a popular performance of 1884, the Victorian actor Sir Henry Irving performed Malvolio as a tragic hero, emphasising the horror of a sane man imprisoned in a dark cell as a madman. Leading actors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, among them John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Donald Sinden, Ian Holm, Richard Briers, Nigel Hawthorne, Derek Jacobi and Stephen Fry, have performed Malvolio in various inventive ways. Given his character and the limitations of his role, responding to Malvolio with sympathy and concern has sometimes seemed like a misdirection to scholars, whose goal usually is to understand Shakespeare’s text in the context of his times.

Changing attitudes to insanity have complicated interpretations of Malvolio. Visiting London’s Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam, founded 1337) to laugh at the inmates’ antics and exchange jokes and insults them was a holiday pastime for Elizabethan and later Londoners. The view of insanity as a moral failure also affected earlier audiences’ attitude to Malvolio’s predicament. The theory of humours, and indeed the lunatic emotional excess that afflicts many of the characters in Twelfth Night, encourages a perspective that makes present-day audiences uneasy. Charles Lamb’s The Essays of Elia, first published as a collection in 1823, embodied an historical shift in how Malvolio was perceived. Lamb, who with his sister knew madness at first hand, defended Malvolio as “cold, austere, repelling, but dignified, consistent… his misfortune is to be misplaced in Illyria.”

[See Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady (London: Virago, 1991) for a study of English attitudes to madness in women and men from 1830 to 1980.]

My argument below seeks to position Malvolio in his Elizabethan world and in the text of Twelfth Night. It opposes the compassionate interpretations preferred by many post-Elizabethan actors and commentators.

Malvolio’s name, which means “ill will,” or, literally in Italian (malvoglio), “I dislike,” points to Shakespeare’s negative intention. Malvolio doesn’t “like” anyone but himself. His all-consuming self-involvement rules out a sense of proportion. He expresses angry contempt for Feste, Maria, Andrew Aguecheek and Toby Belch. He would like to see them all thrown out of Olivia’s household. In Act 1, Scene 5, lines 81-88, Olivia rebukes him for disparaging Feste. She sums up his “humour” (leading trait, explained in “Context” above), in metaphors of sickness, hunting, and war:

O you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distempered appetite.
To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon bullets.
(Act 1, Scene 5, lines 89-90)

Before his exit at Act 2, Scene 3, line 123, Malvolio carries out his duties as steward well enough, but his delusion of superior worth isolates him and excludes fun and relaxation from his life.

Malvolio’s onstage time in Twelfth Night is shorter than Viola’s, Olivia’s, and Orsino’s. He is seen mostly in the secondary plot comprising Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Fabian, Feste and Maria. He condescends to Feste and hints to Olivia that Feste is an inferior jester (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 78-84). His haughtiness when delivering Olivia’s ring to Cesario-Viola is disloyal to the former and overbearing to the latter (Act 2, Scene 2, lines 1-16). In Act 2, Scene 3 he is sanctimonious and officious (meaning “identified with the power of his office”) when he intervenes in the early morning revelries of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Feste—he exercises his stewardship without humour, humanity or tact. Sir Toby puts Malvolio’s spiritual pride in context in a famous accusation: “Dost thou think, because thou are virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 110-112). Although generally disliked, Malvolio is protected by his office, and safe enough until he vows to report Maria, who did not take part in the carousing, to Olivia (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 117-120).

Consequently, in Act 2, Scene 5, watched by Toby, Andrew and Fabian who are hiding “in” [not “behind”] a “boxtree” (line 14), Malvolio becomes Maria’s victim. As a help in visualising the Elizabethan staging, see these images and descriptions of box trees.

Maria’s scheme depends on Malvolio’s conviction of his supreme worth. Combined with ambition, his vanity encourages him to believe that Olivia is smitten and wants to marry him. His “sickness” comes to comic expression (perhaps as the optimistic sanguine humour?) when he fantasises how, as Olivia’s husband, he will lord it over Toby, Andrew and the servants. Maria’s plot operates on Malvolio’s egotistic imagination (“contemplation”), which makes him the opposite of down-to-earth aware humans like Viola:

Maria:… this letter will make a contemplative idiot of him (lines 18-19);
Sir Toby: Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him; how he jets under his advanced plumes! (lines 30-31);
Fabian: Look how imagination blows him (lines 41-42).

Malvolio accepts Maria’s forged letter as real (Act 2, Scene 5, lines 146-63) because it appeals to his superiority complex. He builds confidence, decisiveness and a plan of action on a fantasy of realised ambition (Act 2, Scene 5, lines 164-183).

In Act 3, Scene 4 Malvolio acts out the letter’s suggestions in Olivia’s presence.

Olivia, shrewdly prompted by Maria,  responds, “Why, this is very midsummer madness” (line 61). Eager to speak to Cesario-Viola, she commands her household, “let this fellow be looked to….I would not have him miscarry for the half of my dowry” (lines 65-69). Malvolio misinterprets Olivia’s acceptance of responsibility as love, and concludes, “Well, Jove, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked” (lines 89-90). The plotters proceed to play gleefully with varying diagnoses, that Malvolio is mad, possessed by the devil, and bewitched. Sir Toby declares: “We’ll have him in a dark room and bound” (lines 144-45), which is not what Olivia intended. Following the letter’s injunction, “Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants” (lines 153-54), Malvolio expresses his contempt: “Go hang yourselves all! You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element” (lines 132-33). Dreaming of becoming Olivia’s husband, he relishes having them in his power: “You shall know more hereafter” (lines 134-35). The Renaissance sanguine “humour” here intermingles with the medieval deadly sin of pride. 

Staging Malvolio in his Cell

In Act 4, Scene 2, Feste disguised as Sir Topas the curate admonishes the “mad” Malvolio in his cell. Some post-Shakespearian productions of Twelfth Night, including Irving’s, have staged the scene so as to emphasise the horror of a sane man imprisoned “in a dark room and bound.” The editor Keir Elam takes the Folio stage direction, “Malvolio [within]” at line 22 as evidence that at the venues envisaged by Shakespeare–the Middle Temple and The Globe–audiences could hear but not see the imprisoned Malvolio. Elam cites Feste’s closing references to the positioning of “hell” in morality plays as evidence that at the Globe the “dark room” was the space under the stage, reachable through a trap door but invisible to the audience. This is supported by Maria’s later comment to Feste that Malvolio cannot see him: “Thou mightst have done this without thy beard and gown.” (Act 4, Scene 2, lines 67-68). In Shakespeare’s theatre, therefore, pathos and horror were probably reduced, if not negated, by Malvolio’s invisibility. The scene ends with Feste promising to fetch “light, and paper, and ink” (line 124) so that Malvolio can write to Olivia and prove his sanity.

Malvolio’s imprisonment is brief. Is it therefore a just punishment? In interpreting Twelfth Night, including the exorcism scene (Act 4, Scene 2), a reader or viewer has to decide if the context is Shakespeare’s time or our own. When released, Malvolio returns to the stage in Act 5, he is full of self-righteous anger. His misadventures have taught him nothing. The only friendless character, he leaves Twelfth Night isolated as he entered it–a satire of introverted egoism: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.” (Act 5, Scene 1, line 401).

The prominence of Malvolio in criticism and commentary over four centuries suggests that readers and viewers have seen aspects of themselves in him. Shakespeare may have intended him as a parody of his friend, the rival playwright Ben Jonson, though the similarity is far from obvious. Or Shakespeare may have bestowed on Malvolio traits, such as ambition and social climbing, that he recognised and sometimes deplored in himself. As Greenblatt observes: “Malvolio serves as the shadow side of Shakespeare’s own fascination with achieving the status of gentleman” (Will in the World, p. 82; see pp. 75-86 for Shakespeare’s energetic striving for prestige in the world beyond the theatre).

Since 2000 performances have shown little awareness of Malvolio’s pride and pretentiousness. Instead they emphasise his loyalty to his office, his human-ness and his pathos.

Maria, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew

If we’re naïve about Shakespeare, we feel we have to like these jokers, as embodying the spirit of twelfth night—not to like them, we fear, will align us with the humourless Malvolio and with the “hero” classes against the “comic” classes: with the powerful against the powerless. Bloom, however insists on disliking them:

The revellers and practical jokers—Maria, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek—are the least sympathetic players in Twelfth Night, since their gulling of Malvolio passes into the domain of sadism….Both Belch and Aguecheek are caricatures, yet Maria, a natural comic, has a dangerous inwardness, and is the one truly malicious character in Twelfth Night. (Bloom 237-238)

In what follows I try to weigh the “good” qualities of these characters against the “bad” ones. I hope that you’ll arrive at your own judgement of each of them, based on your own reading and viewing.

Maria

Twelfth Night is a comedy about clever women where Maria makes a third to Viola and Olivia. Sir Toby describes her as Olivia’s “chamber maid,” meaning “lady’s maid.” However her address to Sir Toby as “sir”  (Act 2, Scene 3, line 139) indicates her lower rank. Performed at The Globe and the Middle Temple by a young boy, Maria is small in stature: Viola jokingly refers to her as Olivia’s “giant” (Act 1, Scene 5, line 202), and Sir Toby admires her as Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, who according to myth was a large and fearsome warrior (Act 2, Scene 3, line 175). Maria’s power to undermine Malvolio comes from her ready access to Olivia. Except in rare instances, such as having been born noble and an heiress, as Olivia has been, secret subversion was one of the few powers accessible to women in the patriarchal Elizabethan age.

Maria clearly enjoys the wit-battles in which she easily defeats Sir Andrew (Act 1, Scene 3, lines, 44-79), while meeting her equals in Cesario-Viola (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 200-203) and Feste (Act 2, Scene 5, lines 1-27). Contrary to Bloom’s opinion quoted above, Maria’s exchange with Feste shows that she cares that Olivia might punish Feste for his absences with dismissal. Their exchange also introduces the prospect, later to be realised, of a marriage between Maria and Sir Toby:

“Feste:… If Sir Toby would leave drinking thou wert as witty a piece of Eve’s flesh as any in Illyria” (lines 25-27).

Maria again shows concern when she warns her friends that Olivia is likely to turn them out of her house for their midnight carousing (Act 2, Scene 3, lines 73-75, 86 and 104). Malvolio’s threat to report Maria to Olivia for giving “means for this uncivil rule” (lines 120-123)–an accusation that isn’t true–sparks her plot “to gull him into a nay word” (lines 134-136). Even Sir Andrew can see that Maria is “a good wench.” Sir Toby’s judgment, that she is “a beagle true bred, and one that adores me” (lines 177-178), captures an Elizabethan gentleman’s condescension to women of lower rank. Abetted by Sir Toby, Maria both invents and directs the practical joke played on Malvolio.

• She dreams up the box-tree plot;
• She writes the love letter supposedly from Olivia;
• She sets the stage, i.e. manoeuvres Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian into their hiding place;
• She correctly predicts the outcome of her scheme;
• She guides Olivia’s response by forewarning her that Malvolio is “tainted in his wits” (Act 3, Scene 4, line 14).

In the same scene Maria joins Sir Toby and Fabian in treating Malvolio as one possessed. The more they torment him, the more pompous and overbearing he becomes: “Go hang yourselves all. You are idle, shallow things. I am not of your element” (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 133-34).

Sir Toby Belch

Olivia’s uncle, Sir Toby has more to say in Twelfth Night than any other character. [See the table of parts and lines on p. 382 of Elam’s edition.] This is appropriate because Toby is indeed “all talk.” He is grossly overweight (Belch), but his actions reveal that he lacks substance. Although he doesn’t go to war like Shakespeare’s more famous tavern-haunter, Falstaff, Sir Toby reflects the character-type of the vain-glorious soldier (miles gloriosus)–he’s not the fighter that he thinks he is. More foolish than his younger contemporaries, his goals are mercenary and he is a practised exploiter of the people he calls his friends. Greenblatt writes:

“[Shakespeare] saw in Sir Toby Belch a parasite who sponges off his niece, ruthlessly gulls his supposed friend Sir Andrew, and richly deserves the thrashing he receives at the hands of the effeminate boy he thought he could bully.” (Will in the World, p. 70).

Onstage, both early and late, Sir Toby is drunk (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 115-136; Act 2, Scene 3, lines 1-3 and 188-9). He abets Maria in her letter-writing plot, and stage manages the failed duel between Cesario-Viola and Sir Andrew.

In addition,

• Sir Toby offers to fight Antonio when he intervenes between Cesario-Viola and Sir Andrew, but is saved by the Officers (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 329-32).
• Sir Toby is prepared to duel with Sebastian after the latter strikes Sir Andrew, but is rescued again, this time by Olivia (Act 4, Scene 1, lines 38-45).

The irony is that Sir Toby is destined to encounter “the effeminate boy” for a second time and be soundly beaten. At his final appearance in Act 5,  he reveals his lack of self-knowledge when he blames “Dick Surgeon,” who has fallen asleep after a drunken debauch and so can’t treat his broken head: “Then he’s a rogue and a passy-measures pavin. I hate a drunken rogue.” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 210-11).

Except for his admiration for Maria’s inventiveness, which isn’t love, Sir Toby has no redeeming qualities.

His exploitation of Sir Andrew is, as Greenblatt says, “ruthless”:

• Act 3, Scene 2, lines 52-54: Fabian: “This is a dear mannikin (= puppet) to you, Sir Toby.” Sir Toby: “I have been dear to him lad, some two thousand strong or so.”
• When Sir Andrew tries to buy off his duel with Cesario-Viola by giving her “grey Capulet” Sir Toby diverts the bribe to himself:  “Marry. I’ll ride your horse as well as I ride you.” (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 301-302).
• Finally, when Sir Andrew tries to comfort his friend, Sir Toby abuses him: “Will you help? An ass-head and a coxcomb and a knave, a thin-faced knave, a gull” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 216-17).

Olivia tolerates Sir Toby in his excesses because he belongs to her family. She deplores his drunkenness and upbraids him for challenging Sebastian, but otherwise is fairly respectful. When Sir Toby fears that his plots may lose him Olivia’s support, he plans a withdrawal that prioritises his safety:

I would we were well rid of this knavery. If he [Malvolio] may be conveniently delivered, I would he were, for I am so far in offence with my niece that I cannot pursue with any safety this sport to the upshot. ( Act 4, Scene 2, lines 70-74).

Sir Andrew Aguecheek

Performed in the twentieth century by such notable actors as Alec Guinness, Christopher Plummer and Paul Scofield, Sir Andrew is a comic character who is more complex than might be expected. When Sir Toby and Maria discuss Sir Andrew ahead of his first entrance, the audience discovers (Act 1, Scene 3):
1. Sir Toby has brought him to Olivia’s house ostensibly to persuade Olivia to marry him.
2. Sir Andrew is rich, but spends his money carelessly, without thought for the future.
3. He poses as a musician and as one who speaks three or four languages.
4. He pretends to like duelling, but is in truth a coward.
5. He is a fool.
6. He is drunk day and night in Sir Toby’s company.

Unbelievably, the picture worsens (and becomes funnier?) when Sir Andrew comes on stage. Maria and Sir Toby speak to him in ways that display his vanity, while Sir Toby’s jokes, which are mostly sexual, go over his head.  Sir Andrew boasts of talents that he doesn’t possess: cleverness, knowledge of languages, fencing, dancing and bear baiting (lines 91-94). The growing list encourages the audience to laugh, but also to join Sir Toby and Maria in feeling superior. (Sir Andrew’s “humour” seems on the contrary to be phlegm–too much dullness.) The climax comes when Sir Toby, who has praised Sir Andrew’s legs in “a flame-coloured stock,” flatters him into displaying his prowess in “capering” (dancing).

Similar interchanges follow in the midnight-to-dawn carousing of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Feste, which is interrupted by Maria and then Malvolio (Act 2, Scene 3). Sir Andrew joins Feste and Sir Toby in singing “catches” (rounds). After Malvolio leaves, Maria’s lines plotting revenge are taken up in Sir Andrew’s would-be witty side comments :

MARIA: My purpose is indeed a horse of that colour.
SIR ANDREW: And your horse would now make him [Malvolio] an ass.  (lines 166-67)

A quiet dawn dialogue between Sir Andrew and Sir Toby (lines 176-89) concludes the scene. Here Sir Andrew’s pathos contrasts with Sir Toby’s grasping and cheating:

• When Sir Toby boasts of Maria’s devotion to him, Sir Andrew remembers wistfully, “I was adored once too” (line 179).
• When Sir Andrew regrets the money he has spent, as he believes, in fruitlessly courting Olivia but actually in drinking bouts, Sir Toby reassures him and advises him to send for yet more money.

Sir Andrew continues to echo Sir Toby while the tricksters watch Malvolio’s gulling from the box tree (Act 2, Scene 5). Later he witnesses Cesario-Viola’s courtly greeting to Olivia (Act 3, Scene 1), and in Act 3, Scene 2 plans once again to return home disappointed. Fabian persuades him that Olivia was kind to Cesario-Viola only in order “to awake [Sir Andrew’s] dormouse valour” (lines 18-19). He supports Sir Toby in urging Sir Andrew to prove himself by challenging Cesario-Viola. The tricksters make both combatants more afraid by exaggerating the prowess of each to the other (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 227-302). They may be on the point of engaging when Antonio intervenes.

In Act 4, Scene 1 Sir Toby extends the joke by persuading Sir Andrew to renew the duel, but this time, instead of Cesario-Viola, he attacks Sebastian. Following a beating, Sir Andrew plans “an action of battery” (lines 33-36) against Sebastian, an intention which, as Mahood notes, must have amused the law students at the Middle Temple: “Though I struck him first, yet it’s no matter for that.”

Sir Andrew’s return to the assembled cast in Act 5, after he and Sir Toby have been beaten by Sebastian, injects complexity into what is only superficially a simple characterisation:

• Sir Andrew points out that Sir Toby urged him to attack Sebastian. This is true, but disloyal to his friend (lines 195-96).
• After Sir Toby limps in following Sebastian’s assault, Sir Andrew tries to cheer him with the thought that if he hadn’t been drunk he would have “tickled [Sebastian] othergates than he did” (lines 203-04).
• Despite his own broken head, Sir Andrew offers, “I’ll help you, Sir Toby, because we’ll be dressed together” (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 214-215). This again displays a capacity for friendship that deepens his characterisation.

FABIAN

Fabian carries out functions in Twelfth Night, but is hardly a character in the sense of having characteristics. At the 1602 Middle Temple performance he may have been played by a law student. InAct 3, Scene 4, lines 161-62 and 172-73 he approves the legality of statements in Sir Andrew’s challenge. In Act 5 he is in turn a none-too-honest witness, an advocate, a bailiff and a judge.

In the box-tree scene (Act 2, Scene 5, see above, under “Malvolio”) Fabian acts the part that an audience might have expected Feste to perform.

Fabian next supports Sir Toby in promoting the duel between Cesario-Viola and Sir Andrew (Act 3, Scene 2):

1. He convinces Sir Andrew that Olivia only pretends to favour Cesario-Viola, in order to “awake your dormouse valour, to put fire in your heart and brimstone in your liver” (lines 18-20).
2. He backs Sir Toby’s suggestion that Sir Andrew should challenge Cesario-Viola to a duel, to prove that he (Sir Andrew) truly is Olivia’s preferred fiancé.
3. He guides the audience’s response to Sir Toby’s reading aloud of Sir Andrew’s written challenge (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 151-80).
4. He listens when Sir Toby decides to substitute a verbal challenge.
5.  Fabian then helps to stage-manage Cesario-Viola, up to the moment when the duel is expected to begin (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 266-307).

We don’t see Fabian in Act 4.

He is onstage for most of Act 5, where his functions are again practical:

1. He asks to see the letter that Feste has received from Malvolio (lines 1-6), thereby raising expectations that the letter’s contents will soon be revealed, both to the audience and the onstage characters.
2. In the Act 5 gathering of the characters, Fabian takes over reading the letter from Feste, who began by acting the letter’s writer as a madman (lines 304-328).
3. Fabian accompanies Malvolio when he enters from his place of confinement.
4. He provides Olivia and the company with his version of the joke against Malvolio (lines 348-92). When, with good reason, Malvolio is not satisfied, Olivia gives Fabian the task of reconciliation: “Pursue him and entreat him to a peace” (line 403).

If Fabian was played by a member of the law school, his task in Act 5 as settler of the dispute is appropriate. Fabian’s characterisation does not invite confidence in the law or admiration for lawyers, an ambivalence that is evident in others of Shakespeare’s works.

Feste

“I wear not motley in my brain.” (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 54-55)

Shakespeare must have had a virtuoso performer in mind when he created Feste. In 1912 Granville-Barker asked:

Who was Shakespeare’s clown, a sweet-voiced singer and something much more than a comic actor? He wrote Feste for him, and later the Fool in Lear. At least, I can conceive of no dramatist risking the writing of such parts unless he knew he had a man to play them.

(“Preface to Twelfth Night,” in Harley Granville-Barker, Prefaces to Shakespeare, Vol. VI. 1912. Introd. Edward M. Moore. London: B. T. Batsford, 1974, pp. 26-32; p. 27:https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/prefacestoshakes0006gran/prefacestoshakes0006gran.pdf.)

Later commentators confirm that Robert Armin, an accomplished clown, mime, singer and a playwright himself, was the first performer of Shakespeare’s Feste.

Even to Armin, Feste’s variable personae as fool, beggar, singer, priest and moral mentor to the audience and other characters must have been a challenge. Feste is as much a paradox as he is a character:

1. He is a wise man, who sees through and seeks to correct the delusions of his “betters”–upper-class characters such as Olivia and Orsino.
2. As well as being beautiful, his three solo songs, all concerned with the passing of time, contain enigmas. They deepen the philosophical dimension of Twelfth Night.
3. Feste’s profession is to make people laugh, and his lines are full of wit.
4. Feste is all-too-human in that he pursues and carries out revenge for Malvolio’s maligning of him to Olivia. He takes part in practical jokes. Although he is at least middle-aged, sometimes he behaves like a child.
5. Just as he travels between Olivia’s and Orsino’s houses, so he traverses the gap between performers and the audience. He both participates in and comments on events. He draws the audience into the action.

Feste first appears in Act 1, Scene 5, when he joins in a wit contest with Maria (lines 1-29). We discover that he is a free spirit who wanders to households other than Olivia’s, which is his base. Not young–Olivia’s father also delighted in Feste (Act 2, Scene 4, lines 12-14)–he survives on tips that in the course of the play he cajoles out of Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, Orsino, Sebastian and Viola. His wandering has jeopardised Olivia’s patronage, and his first soliloquy is a prayer to “wit” to save him from dismissal (lines 30-34). He recognises virtues and sins as inherent to humans (Act 1, Scene 5, lines 38-48). He then uplifts Olivia with a comic parody of logical reasoning that is full of wisdom, e.g. “As there is no true cuckold but calamity, so beauty’s a flower” (lines 48-49), meaning: “The impact of disaster (such as the loss of her brother) is deceptive–one day Olivia will return to life and love. This is well, because like a flower, her beauty will not last.” Feste is the main vehicle for Twelfth Night‘s themes of mutability and carpe diem (seize the day).

Malvolio disparages Feste to Olivia, and Feste becomes Malvolio’s nemesis.

The fateful exchange between Feste and Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5, lines 71-88 encourages the audience to like Feste and to dislike Malvolio.

1.Olivia’s praise of Feste draws a malicious response from Malvolio in which he foretells Feste’s old age and death (lines 73-75): the infirmity of old age generally makes wise people foolish. In Feste’s case infirmity leading to death is to be welcomed, because it will make him a “better Fool,” i.e. even more foolish.

2.Feste’s reply turns the insult back on Malvolio (lines 76-79): may God soon make you infirm, so that your folly may increase. Sir Toby says that I (Feste) am not clever, but I wouldn’t bet two pennies that you aren’t a fool.

3.Prompted by Olivia, Malvolio responds, not with wit or humour, but with insults (lines 81-88): Feste is uncreative (“barren”); the other day (Malvolio claims) I saw him defeated by an ordinary brainless fool; he’s only witty when you provide him with opportunities; people who seem to be wise (meaning, daringly, Olivia) but who laugh at fools, are no better than their stooges.

Olivia’s stern rebuking of Malvolio concludes the contest (lines 89-95).

Later in Scene 5 Feste expresses his gratitude to Olivia for defending him by 1)wishing that Mercury (god of thieves) will reward her by making her a good liar (lines 96-97), 2) by praising her (lines 111-13), and 3) by offering to look after her drunken uncle, Sir Toby (lines 135-36).

In Act 2, Scene 3 Feste plays a leading part in the late-night drinking session, where he sings the lovely song, “O mistress mine.” The theme once again is carpe diem. In this scene Feste does not speak after he performs, with Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, the satiric part song, “Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone” (lines 102-112). He does not participate in planning Maria’s “box-tree” plot. Later Fabian takes what we might have expected to be Feste’s place, both in carrying out that plot and in managing the near-duel between Sir Andrew and Viola.

Appearing next at Orsino’s house, Feste sings “Come away, come away, death.”

“Come away, come away, death” is as multi-faceted as Feste himself. It can be performed and responded to seriously as a lover’s lament after rejection by “a fair cruel maid.” Alternatively it can be taken as a parody of Orsino’s love lunacy, which Feste discerns to be both changeable and insubstantial: “[T]hat’s it that makes a good voyage of nothing” (Act 2, Scene 4, lines 87-88). 

Feste and Viola are equally matched in their wit duel, which opens Act 3. Feste discloses one of his truths–the power of words to trick and deceive:

Viola: Thy reason, man?
Feste: Troth sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false I am loathe to prove reason with them. (Scene 1, lines 24-26)

Playing on “conster,” “welkin” and “element,” Feste’s last words in this scene sum up his message, that words are inherently multi-layered and opaque.

Feste’s disguise as the curate Sir Topas, introduced in Act 4 to exorcise the imprisoned Malvolio’s “devil,” can be understood, 

1. either as parodying Feste’s role as a teacher of wisdom,
2. or as making visible his true self as a teacher of wisdom: “I say there is no darkness but ignorance” (lines 44-45).

Paradoxically, Malvolio is most rational and human in this scene of his “madness.” He holds to the truth when “Sir Topas” claims, contrary to reason, that the clerestories in the pitch-black cell are “as lustrous as ebony” (line 40), and counters Pythagoras’ theory of the transmigration of souls with the Christian view of one life, one judgment. 

In Act 5 we discover that, “as a madman’s epistles are not gospels,” so Feste has withheld Malvolio’s letter from Olivia, since “today morning” (lines 300-01). When at last, at her command he begins to read the letter, he does so in such a manner that Olivia asks, “How now, art thou mad?” Feste rejoins: “But to read in his [Malvolio’s] right wits is to read thus.” Feste seems determined to maintain the fiction of Malvolio’s madness. Olivia therefore asks Fabian, Feste’s understudy in Twelfth Night, to read the letter. 

Feste’s determination to be revenged on Malvolio, played out in his disguise as Sir Topas and his childish resistance to reading the letter except mockingly are the “clown” side of his character.

After Malvolio, Olivia and Fabian have uncovered the plot against Malvolio, Feste reminds the audience of Malvolio’s misdeeds: 

FOOL: “Why, some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrown upon them.” I was one, sir, in this interlude, one Sir Topas, sir, but that’s all one. “By the Lord, fool, I am not mad”–but do you remember “Madam, why laugh you at such a barren rascal; an you smile not, he’s gagged”? And thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges. (Act 5, Scene 1, lines 393-400).

Feste the Wise Fool

Feste short circuits our dualisms and dichotomies and hierarchies. His most obvious function is to challenge the dualism of foolishness and wit. His less obvious but more profound function is to explore the dichotomy between foolishness and wisdom. Feste’s encounters with Olivia and Orsino reveal that wisdom is no respecter of class: people at the bottom of the social ladder can be wiser than those at the top.

Why does Shakespeare put so much wisdom in the mouth of a professional fool? Is he making the point that wisdom transcends class and profession: that people can find wisdom anywhere?—“Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise” (Matthew 21.16).

Yet Feste is also truly comic: he takes part in practical jokes–visiting Malvolio disguised as Sir Topas. He is a contradiction–he furthers the writing of Malvolio’s letter, but delays its transmission to Olivia.

Feste’s undignified way of life and dependency on others for money and shelter enhance if anything his standing as a philosopher. He is a free spirit who makes a living by challenging assumptions.

Alternatively, is Feste a parody of a philosopher? Does he embody the judgment that philosophy is useless, both in itself, and as an aid to humans who search for wisdom?

Ultimately, Feste reveals the uncertainty inherent in categorising humans at all. A professed Fool, he corrects the delusions of characters who believe themselves–and are believed by others–to be wiser than he is.

Generations

The younger generation–Viola, Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian–who make choices free of parental mentorship or control, is the focus of Twelfth Night. Act 1 opens with Olivia mourning the deaths of her father and brother. At Act 2, Scene 1, lines 16-18, we learn that Sebastian’s and Viola’s father is also dead. Because of these gaps in their families, Olivia and Viola as young women enjoy a self-determination for which, in Shakespeare’s generation, the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, who was twenty-five when she began her reign, was the most obvious model.  The failings of Olivia’s uncle Sir Toby, Twelfth Night’s only parental figure, rule him out as an authority (see above). Feste disguises his wisdom with his fool’s attire and with puns, jokes and music. Twelfth Night differs from most of Shakespeare’s comedies by paying little attention to the older generation. In Twelfth Night both redemption and retribution belong to the young.

Twelfth Night: The Uses of Soliloquy

Practical–keeps the audience up to date with changes in feeling

• In Act 1, Scene 5, lines 294-305 and 315-318, Olivia contemplates Orsino’s messenger Viola-Cesario after her departure, revealing that she has fallen in love. Shakespeare is deploying a convention made necessary by the immediacy of performance and the shortness of staging time.
• Before their wedding, Sebastian soliloquises as to why Olivia is obsessed with him, but promises nevertheless to be a faithful husband (Act 4, Scene 3, lines 1-22).

Characterisation–fills out a speaker’s thoughts so that we know her or him better

• In Act 2, Scene 2, lines 17-41, Viola’s soliloquy is full of compassion for Olivia’s plight.
• Antonio decides to follow Sebastian, despite the risk to himself (Act 2, Scene 1, lines 43-47).
• In Act 2, Scene 5, lines 22-27, 43 etc., Viola and Feste reveal their thoughts to the audience in soliloquys, a habit that makes them the most liked characters in Twelfth Night.
• Malvolio soliloquizes until his exit at line 183, interspersed with comments from the eavesdroppers. He has a long aside after Olivia has commanded that he be cared for in his madness (Act 3, Scene 4, lines 70-90). These monologues, the longest in the play, manifest Malvolio’s obsessive focus on himself, but might also arouse engagement and compassion.
• Guides the audience’s understanding of characters other than the speaker, e.g. in Act 3, Scene 1 Viola admires Feste’s wisdom.

Plot development

• Following the scene of Antonio’s arrest in Act 3, Scene 4, lines 393-396, Viola speculates that Antonio may have mistaken her for her brother.