Malvolio as the Symbol of Social Misery and Disorganization - Essay Example

Authors Name Institution Name Subject Date Social Perspectives Outline The Elizabethan audience resented variations from a story that they knew; and therefore such changes as a competent playwright made usually arose from some major purpose, and so should afford a clue to the theme of the piece and the intention of the author. In Twelfth Night, however, the sources are so uncertain and seem to have supplied so little of Shakespeare's action that their light is seldom better than a will-o'-the-wisp. They relate almost exclusively to the Viola-Orsino plot, and give practically nothing of Feste or Malvolio or Sir Toby or Sir Andrew or Maria. The addition of foolish suitors such as Malvolio and Sir Andrew may well have been inspired by Italian comedy; but most of the most comic parts of the play are Shakespeare's own, and so may well spring from extraliterary origins. Introduction The stage history of a play sometimes supplies a hint concerning the interpretation of a part. Certain actors, then as now, specialized in certain types of role; and, in a stock company such as Shakespeare's, the casting of the parts would largely be a matter of fitting the proper role to the proper actor. Indeed, Shakespeare must have written certain parts that of Feste, for example with certain actors in mind. Our theatrical records, unfortunately, for the reign of Elizabeth are rather scant and sketchy; but, even so, sufficient work has been done to make this type of background useful; for, if one knows the actor who played a part, one can somewhat infer from his other roles the traits of character that he most effectively expressed, and so the nature of the particular role in question. For example, the fact that the great Burbage seems to have played Orsino shows the importance of the Duke in Elizabethan eyes; William Sly, the "juvenile lead" who did the choleric Laertes and the romantic Fenton, apparently took the like part in Twelfth Night of Sebastian; and the casting of Robert Armin, who was famous as a professional court fool, in the part of Feste implies that this role realistically portrayed the professional fool in contemporary life. Of course, this type of proof is seldom definite and final; often only a few of an actor's parts are known, and sometimes they show little consistency in type. In a particular play, moreover, the actor may have tried an experiment, or he may have been accidentally miscast. (Patrick Collinson, 1992) In short, the evidence on Twelfth Night external to the text throws but a pale and flickering light on interpretation: the sources are too doubtful and diverse; no trace remains of the evolution of the play in Shakespeare's mind; the casting of the parts is not always certain; and Shakespeare, as a great artist, treated conventional character and situation with such originality that it is not safe to suppose one of his fools just the usual stage fool, or his steward just the usual stage servant. Such evidence, however, though by itself inconclusive, cannot be ignored. In this play, therefore, the text must serve as the chief basis for interpretation, not the text as the usual twentieth century reader understands it, reading into it his own modern English, his own ideas and prepossessions, and his own social concepts, but the text as Shakespeare's audience must have experienced and felt it. To put ourselves back into this faraway locale is no easy matter, and to keep ourselves there requires a constant check of contemporary documents upon our every thought and feeling as we go through the play. Comedy, as an artistic medium, especially depends on contemporaneous background; for even the concept of what is funny varies from age to age, with the growth of new social prejudices and sympathies and with a quickening sense of the ironies of life. Tragedy takes its themes from greater, more universal laws and situations; but comedy satirizes current whimseys that change somewhat from year to year. A successful comedy like Twelfth Night, therefore, must of necessity clothe its universal theme in peculiarly Elizabethan, and therefore ephemeral, forms; and these habiliments of time and place must be mastered, in so far as that be possible, before one can understand even a minor character or a single situation and Shakespeare's way of handling it. Thus and only thus must the text be minutely and systematically scanned and shrewdly understood if it is to yield its secret of Shakespeare's purpose and his audience's reaction to the play. The character Malvolio is a trusted and efficient upper servant. This is a wide social range, and the evidence for it all requires careful examination of the text in the light of current conditions attested by current writers. Thus each separate problem concerning each character must be seen in its Elizabethan setting; and the true Elizabethan setting must be determined, not by mere guess, but by the citation of contemporary documents. To achieve this, a mass of contemporary writings on the social classes and their relations and their attitudes toward one another must be explored and sifted. Material gleaned from plays, since it may reflect dramatic convention rather than actual fact, is not too reliable, and material from poetry is likely to be mere imaginative romance, and so is rarely useful; but current tracts on nobles and courtiers, on military life, on servants, and court fools take their rise from realistic observation. Above all, character-writers like Earle and Overbury give a wealth of evidence on manners and customs and contemporary social types. Such special situations, moreover, as the courtship of Olivia and the duel of Sir Andrew must be studied in relation to the actual conventions and the etiquette that governed such affairs. Incongruous contrast is perhaps the chief basis of the comic, and on the stage this incongruity arises not only between a Sir Toby and a Sir Andrew but also between each figure and its living prototype. This second sort of incongruity is lost on one who does not know Elizabethan society. Malvolio by birth is surely no better than the yeoman whose noble marriage he cites as such consoling precedent. They all speak and behave quite as an Elizabethan audience of wellborn tyro lawyers and young courtiers would have expected them and wished them to behave; and they come to ends that such an audience would have deemed appropriate; for Shakespeare, like a clever modern playwright, knew the feelings and tastes of his audience, not only in drama but in life, and, for that matter, doubtless shared them. Indeed, he shrewdly held the mirror up to very nature; but the great extent to which he did so cannot be comprehended until one knows "nature," both social and psychological, as he and his audience daily saw and understood it. "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them". - Act II, Scene V http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-twelfth-night.htm Age and physique and social class and mental traits depend on interlocking evidence, and a character may subtly change, as did Orsino's before the play began, so that his innate humor and true nature appear only by inference in the hints of others; or they may shift during the course of the action as with Malvolio's rising choler. Every part of the comedy, as in life, reacts on every other part, and can be fully understood only in these multiform relations. In the resolution of such a problem, a single unvaried plan for every chapter is hardly possible, but those chapters devoted to the analysis of each character in succession may well approximate some such arrangement as the following: first, a discussion of the place and importance of the role, a survey of the comment of some critics, and Shakespeare's introduction of the character at his initial entrance; then a review of the character's place in society -- a matter generally fixed by birth -- something of his education and past life, his psychological humor and astrological complexion, a survey of his chief actions in the play and his relation to the other characters whom his part touches, with some effort to see his motives and doings and reactions in the light of his inner and outer self, finally in conclusion, a hazardous suggestion of his future as an Elizabethan might suppose it, and some attempted explanation of Shakespeare's attitude toward him of praise or excuse or blame. Altogether, each chapter becomes a short biography so far as the play states or implies the facts. Such a review of all the major roles should prepare for a reasoned exposition of plot and then of setting and style and theme. Thus, in the end, the whole comedy, having been analyzed in detail as a product of the Elizabethan age, should appear before us, character by character, incident by incident, and element by element, so that the judicious reader, if he possess the patience to assimilate all these diverse materials and bring them to bear on a rereading of the text, can see in it something rather like what Shakespeare's audience saw, and what Shakespeare, as a master of his theater, must have intended them to see. The effort is great both for the present interpreter and for his reader; but despite the many pitfalls, it seems worthy of the trial. (Richard Desper, 1995, p.37-47) Malvolio's religion but his social status would seem to hold the key to this change in attitude toward him in the last century; and indeed his position in the household of the Countess reflects a change in the Elizabethan serving classes that was causing both hardship and bitterness: there were too many servants, and not enough wherewithal to feed and clothe them. In the turbulent Middle Ages, when one's house had been perforce a castle, armed retainers on whose loyalty one could rely were well worth their board and keep; and, quite in the tradition of Beowulf's thanes, they feasted in the hall, brawled indoors and out, and scorned all servile duties and the villeins who performed them. With such fine fellows, it was a word and a blow, and the word was commonly an oath. Some were "prowde and euill natured," and yet were tolerated because they were good fighters or because their fathers were important vassals. Humble wayfarers and travelers of note, with less right than Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, were entertained with their retainers; and, over this boisterous crew, drinking and roistering in the hall, ruled the lord of the manor. By degrees, however, the feudal suzerain and his family withdrew to the greater privacy of a soler or a parlor, a sunroom or a conversation place; and a steward, such as Malvolio, would be the logical intermediary between the master of the house and the habitués of the hall. (Richard Desper, 1995, p.37-47) Malvolio's humble place, in comic contrast to his exalted aspirations, appears best symbolized by the references to costume in the play. The dress of the Elizabethan fine gentleman was variable and conglomerate. Such is Portia's English suitor and Rowlands' "Signieur Fantastike." The lower orders, however, still bound by custom, if not by sumptuary laws, were generally garbed according to their class: the servants at least of more conservative houses in blue coats, and others in accordance with their trades. The servant, however, of a forward-looking gentleman such as Bassanio might hope to be "lapt in Lyverie," and was envied for his fine clothes. About 1600, Malvolio's yellow stockings and cross-garters seem to have had a plebeian connotation; and thus he aspires to court the Countess in clothes that imply his humble origins. Maria compares his costume to that of a poor country pedagogue; Porter Two angry Women (1599) took cross- garters as the sign of a servingman; and Overbury associated them with a "gentleman-usher," whom he apparently classed below a footman. Yellow stockings seem to have been the sign manual of a boorish country yeoman. Malvolio then, in the very act of his social apotheosis, is gulled into donning the habiliments, partly of the humble yeomanry whence he seems to have sprung, and partly of the household servitor, the very class from which he is trying to escape. This is an irony even finer than Ben Jonson's treatment of the incongruous coat of arms with which Sogliardo, like Malvolio, attempts to gain gentility. Indeed, the coverings of Malvolio's legs are the very nadir of impropriety. He is seen "practicing behavior"; he preposterously declares himself "point-deuise the very man"; and, in this incongruous costume, he enters the presence of the Countess herself and assumes, as he supposes, the haughty airs and graces of his betters. "Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better" Act III, Scene I http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-twelfth-night.htm Most Elizabethans regarded the structure of society as divinely ordained and so immutable; and men were therefore supposed to be content with the station in life to which God had appointed them. Malvolio plans to skip at one bound some four or five gradations, very much as if a petty officer intrigued to become colonel of the regiment! No wonder the steward cons politic authors and studies manners with his shadow, for even the commonest forms of courtesy reflected social class, and bodily carriage, gesture, and titles and pronouns of address varied between every two individuals, depending largely on comparative rank; thus the new "Count Malvolio" must use an utterly new idiom of daily etiquette. This change was overwhelming; nevertheless it was just within the realms of possibility: Malvolio himself cites the precedent of the Lady of Strachy's yeoman; Lord Burghley's father was a mere yeoman of the royal chamber; the Duchess of Suffolk married her Master of the Horse; and a Duchess of Malfi might wed her servant. Indeed, the age was full of "aspiring mindes"; Ophelia sang of the false steward who stole his master's daughter, and Hamlet complained that "the toe of the peasant" came near "the heel of the courtier." (Donna Hamilton, 1992) Indeed, a chamberlain, as the intimate and personal servant of an up-to-date lady," especially a chamberlain who had been used "with a more exalted respect" than her other followers, might feel that he should hope for better things. Thus Malvolio's plans were not only outrageous, but, even worse -- possible of fulfillment. The Elizabethans naturally sympathized with the "cast" retainers and those that suffered from social change. They lamented the decline of liberality, the "incertaintle of service," and the growing severity of masters who would use any excuse to relieve themselves of one more hungry mouth. England had indeed become the "Purgatory of Servants" Falstaff's Robin pathetically depicts the wretched case of page and manat-arms, and Feste might well beware of Olivia's displeasure for his intermitted absence, when merely the "breaking of a Bulrush" might cast one out on the highway. A "great swarm" of master fewer men had no choice but to turn thieves and beggars, for they had served no apprenticeship for any trade. These vagabonds were the terror of the countryside and a constant problem to the government. In short, not only was change per se unwelcome, but Malvolio, as the symbol of a change that was generally deplored and was associated with obvious social evils and painful maladjustments -- Malvolio, flaunting his impudent designs before his social betters and glorying in the dominion that he hopes shortly to assume -- would naturally present to the Elizabethans a most odious figure and thus become a Saint Sebastian for every shaft of satire. The Elizabethans were troubled with the problem of a superabundance of retainers who were falling in status below the very servant class -- a situation unknown to recent times. Thus the keen enmities of an Elizabethan household in which the wellborn retainers are fighting for their livelihoods are lost upon those modern critics who ignore the social background of the play. Malvolio, like Shylock, was detested because the audience saw in him a social type that it despised and an unsolved social problem that it feared. This antipathy of the Elizabethans toward Malvolio, an antipathy both of the auditors in the pit and of the characters on the stage, clearly arose, not from his Puritanism -- if, indeed, he be a Puritan -- but from his social effrontery: it sinned against God's ordinance; and it endangered a society already rocked to its foundations by the fall of age-old feudalism. Indeed, Malvolio's very clothes attest him a particularly blatant upstart, and he clearly planned to curtail the lavish bounty that, before the founding of Virginia, was the only means of livelihood for many younger sons of county families. No wonder the young lawyers of the Middle Temple relished his downfall. A successful play is collaboration of dramatist and audience; and, in judging a piece, critics must not ignore the audience's part in the performance, its likes and dislikes, its pent-up feelings that the plot may express and so release. Without a knowledge of the current attitude toward such as Malvolio, the motivation of Twelfth Night is obscured, the action unconvincing, and the play mere farce. Probably to the Elizabethans the outstanding fact about Malvolio was not his suppression of revelry but his low birth for such a high position in so great a household; and, if he has: but one original, this probably is the clue by which to find it. The Romantic Movement interpreted Shakespeare's plays according to its heart's desire as gorgeous fantasies; and now realism insists that they are mere photographs of living models. The present writer deprecates these extremes unless the proof be incontestable; he believes that Shakespeare, like all great artists, used both actual life and his imagination, the one in general as his raw materials, the other as an artistic, shaping force. The interpretation of Shakespeare's plays is a somewhat humble business, like the cleaning and restoration of the canvas of some old master; and, in both cases, the greatness of the originals enforces humility on whoever works on them. Humble though the interpreter may be, his activity is nevertheless needful to restore the lights and shades and fine tints of the original, for words dim quite as colors do, and only painstaking care and study can bring back the fleeting harmonies in shades of meaning and implied suggestion -- those fine nuances that separate mere clever caricature from a great portrait. Conclusion Malvolio is indeed a master portrait; but the world has moved so far away from him that generations of accumulated change have begrimed the colors, erased detail, and obliterated the background. The modern, with his modern democracy and his modern liking for efficient management at any cost, finds Malvolio a rather commonplace, perhaps even a pathetic, type. The Industrial Revolution has made us used to social change and its hardships and its social interlopers: we do not condemn ambition that reaches out beyond its class, nor see in Malvolio's the symbol of social misery and disorganization. The hardships that these household changes shown in the play affected in the Elizabethan world; and so, as in the case of Shylock, the bitterness of the dramatist and of the other characters finds no answering chord in us. This is the tragedy of great art that a thing of beauty cannot be a joy forever, unless one can recapture the essential background of the age that brought it forth. Not only do we fail to see Malvolio's social implications, but we also miss his choleric nature and the implications of this choler; for, not merely social structure but intellectual beliefs and scientific theories are passing, temporal things. Thus we have either spoiled the comedy of the play by making Malvolio a sympathetic character, or tried to explain his disagreeable qualities on the mere basis of his being disagreeable, without realizing that his actions arise from a psychology that clashed with his lowly station and from a social change that made both his social class and his ambitions pernicious and odious. Thus, how can Viola be the heroine, and Sir Toby or Malvolio the comic hero, as most critics would suggest, when this hero and this heroine have little or no relation with each other in the plot? The identity of the hero is possibly open to question; but undoubtedly the heroine, as the early actresses who chose the role well knew, is clearly the Countess Olivia. Whereas Shakespeare reduced the role of Viola from his source, his chief additions Toby, Andrew, Maria, Feste, Malvolio -- all center around Olivia; whereas he filled out Viola's not-too convincing part with the facile stuff of stage convention, he made Olivia a realistic portrayal of a current type; and, to accent her part further, he gave her as fully and carefully prepared a grand entry as he gave any character in all his plays. Olivia is far from a wooden convention, as some critics seem to think; she is a vital and realistic force in a comedy of manners -- a woman whose decisions (as a countess' decisions should) rule the fortunes and lives of those about her and so determine the plot. She can quietly make up her mind and bide her time and have her way, and doubtless she proved an able administrator of her domain. Indeed, she is perhaps the most psychologically true-to- Elizabethan -life of Shakespeare's long list of great ladies; and yet, especially in her grand passion, she is very human -- in short, a counterpart of Queen Elizabeth herself, but luckier in loving a Sebastian rather than a Leicester or an Essex. Reference: Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967, 1992 Richard Desper, The Elizabethan Review, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1995, p.37-47 Donna Hamilton, Shakespeare and the Politics of Protestant England, University Press of Kentucky, 1992 http://www.william-shakespeare.info/shakespeare-play-twelfth-night.htm Read More