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Updated: June 10, 2025
After dinner I studied politics in the Examiner and read an article on Cobbett, which made me laugh, and the motto to which might have been "Malvolio, thou art sick of self-conceit." ... Thursday, July 21st. At dinner a discussion, suggested by Mr. D 's conduct to Mr.
No doubt, among the circles of the highest nobility, while the king and queen may be people of simple and unpretending manners, there may be some arrogant and self-sufficient master of ceremonies, some Malvolio whose pomposity is in strange contrast to the good-breeding of Olivia. It is the lesser star which twinkles most.
"That was real acting," said Sally May with the air of a theatre habitué as Malvolio pranced off the stage in the immortal scene of the yellow stockings and cross-garters.
"He left this ring behind him," she said, taking one from her finger. "Tell him I will none of it." Malvolio did as he was bid, and then Viola, who of course knew perfectly well that she had left no ring behind her, saw with a woman's quickness that Olivia loved her. Then she went back to the Duke, very sad at heart for her lover, and for Olivia, and for herself.
What the waiting-woman promised in jest, Dame Fortune has seriously bestowed on this Malvolio, and his political cross-garterings not only find favor with the Radical Olivia, but are admired by the Sir Tobys of the European world. Indeed, Fortune has conceits as quaint as those of Haroun al-Raschid. The beggar, from profound sleep, awoke in the Caliph's bed.
One may not say of it, as Johnson said of the Rehearsal, that it 'has not wit enough to keep it sweet. Neither may he, upon second thought, conclude that 'it has not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction. It has, indeed, a bottom of good sense; and so had Malvolio. It is filled from end to beginning with wit, or with what passed for wit among many readers of that day.
Yet even among Senators there were degrees in dogmatism, from the frank South Carolinian brutality, to that of Webster, Benton, Clay, or Sumner himself, until in extreme cases, like Conkling, it became Shakespearian and bouffe as Godkin used to call it like Malvolio. Sumner had become dogmatic like the rest, but he had at least the merit of qualities that warranted dogmatism.
Man knows nothing but what God teaches him. Self tells him that he has found out everything for himself, and can say what he thinks fit without fear of God or man. Therefore the proud, self-willed, self-conceited man must come to harm, like Malvolio in the famous play, merely because he is in the blackest night of ignorance. He has mistaken who he is, what he is, where he is.
All through that delightful day, as I roamed through the fine old halls, I would encounter him passing by, still in his lofty dream, still controlling all, with a weight of delegated authority on his broad shoulders. Only at the very close did he vouchsafe a few dignified, encouraging words, and then passed on. He reminded me much of Elia's description of Bensley's Malvolio.
That Malvolio was meant to be represented as possessing some estimable qualities, the expression of the Duke in his anxiety to have him reconciled, almost infers: "Pursue him, and intreat him to a peace." Even in his abused state of chains and darkness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.
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