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Updated: May 24, 2025
Show Malvolio's character, his connection with the other characters and with the plot and the foolery of the play, and state the argument for and against Shakespeare's meaning to make fun of him as a Puritan. Is it a defect in the play that the fool, who has less to do with the plot, is more important than Antonio, who has somewhat more to do with it?
Who would have foreseen Malvolio's exquisitely preposterous address to Jove? In Tartufe there are no such surprises. He displays three qualities, and three only religious hypocrisy, lasciviousness, and the love of power; and there is not a word that he utters which is not impregnated with one or all of these.
The latter half of the novel is a tissue of intrigue upon intrigue, with a complication of lawsuits and letters in which Malvolio's villainy is fully exposed, and he is forced to separate from Flavilla, but is unable to exert his claims upon Dalinda. She in turn cannot wring from him any compensation, nor can she in conscience recompense the faithful love of Leander while her husband is living.
How does some of the later fun recoil against Toby and Sir Andrew? Are the Puritans made fun of in Malvolio's person? Are the characters least scathed by the fun for that reason superior to the others?
As the fool represents the merry-making spirit of the play, so Malvolio stands for the dupes of it. Does any one sympathize with him? Who shows the clearest understanding of his faults? What signs are there in the play of Malvolio's being a Puritan? Is there any evidence against it?
We can imagine Viola at once seeing through Malvolio's attempt at pleasing Olivia, instead of taking him for mad, as Olivia did. Which is the best lover, the Duke, Sebastian, Olivia, or Viola? Show how the droll situations of the play are mainly contrived by some of the characters in order to make others their laughing-stocks. Who are Sir Toby's butts?
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.
He acts with his eyelids, which move while all the rest of the face is motionless; with his pursed, reticent mouth, with his prim and pompous gestures; with that self-consciousness which brings all Malvolio's troubles upon him. It is a fantastic, tragically comic thing, done with rare calculation, and it has its formal, almost cruel share in the immense gaiety of the piece.
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