The disagreement always existing between the steward Malvolio and the
riotous members of Olivia’s household broke at last into warfare. On
the night of the day when Duke Orsino’s messenger came to Olivia, Sir
Toby and Sir Andrew chose to sit up late, drinking and singing. Feste,
the clown, joined them, and after one song, sung sweetly enough by
himself, the whole trio united in yelling out a noisy catch. The din
they made roused the household, and Maria came hurrying in to beg them
to be quiet.
“Why, what a caterwauling you keep here!” she cried. “If my lady have
not called up her steward Malvolio and bade him turn you out of doors,
never trust me.”
But all her attempts to silence them were useless. They laughed,
shouted, called for more wine, and went on singing at the pitch of
their voices. In vain she begged for peace; they were quite beyond
control. When Malvolio himself appeared, they paid no more heed to him
than they had done to Maria, and only answered his rebuking words by
each singing at him in turn snatches of different songs.
“My masters, are you mad, or what are you?” he cried, with just
indignation. “Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble
like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an alehouse of my
lady’s house that you squeak out your vulgar catches at the top of
your voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?”
“We did keep time, sir, in our catches,” said Sir Toby. “Shut up!”
“Sir Toby, I must be round with you. My lady bade me tell you that,
though she harbours you as her kinsman, she is not allied to your bad
behaviour. If you can separate yourself from your misdoings, you are
welcome to the house; if not, if it would please you to take leave of
her, she is very willing to bid you farewell.”
“Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone!” trolled out Sir
Toby, in mock melancholy, and not in the least impressed by Malvolio’s
stern rebuke.
[Illustration: “Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone!”]
“Nay, good Sir Toby,” pleaded Maria.
“‘His eyes do show his days are almost done,’” chimed in the clown,
carrying on the song.
All Malvolio’s angry speeches were met with the same musical mockery,
and nothing would make the culprits stop. Almost speechless with fury,
Malvolio left the revellers, declaring that his lady should know of
their goings-on.
“Sweet Sir Toby, be patient for to-night,” urged Maria. “Since
the youth of Duke Orsino’s was to-day with my lady, she is much
disquieted. For Monsieur Malvolio, let me alone with him. If I do not
gull him into a by-word and make him a general laughing-stock, never
trust my wit. I know I can do it.”
“Good, good! Tell us something about him,” said Sir Toby.
“Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan,” said Maria.
“Oh, if I thought that, I’d beat him like a dog!” cried the silly Sir
Andrew.
“What, for being a puritan?” asked Sir Toby, who was always ready
to ridicule Sir Andrew’s brainless remarks, though he made such a
companion of him. “Thy exquisite reason, dear knight?”
“I have no exquisite reason for it, but I have reason good enough,”
said the foolish young man sulkily.
[Illustration: “I have no exquisite reason.”]
Maria then went on to say that Malvolio’s self-conceit as to his own
merits was so great that he imagined everyone who looked at him loved
him, and this would give them an opening for their revenge. She would
drop in his way some vaguely expressed letters of love, in which he
should find his different peculiarities so well described that there
could be no doubt as to whom was meant. She could write very like
the lady Olivia; in fact, they sometimes could not tell their own
handwritings apart. Malvolio would think the letters he found came
from Olivia, and that she was in love with him.
Maria’s trick was not a very praiseworthy one, but her hearers were
not troubled with scruples. They only thought how delightfully comic
it would be to see the stiff and starched steward priding himself on
the conquest he had made, and what deep humiliation would fall on him
when his mistake was discovered.
* * * * *
Maria was not long in carrying out her scheme, and Malvolio was
immediately caught with the bait. Having once got into his mind the
absurd idea that the Countess Olivia was in love with him, he began
weaving plans of what he should do when he was advanced to the high
position of her husband. His ambitious meditations were overheard by
the conspirators, for Maria had run into the garden to warn them of
his approach.
“Get all three into the box-tree,” she cried; “Malvolio is coming down
this walk. He has been yonder in the sun practising behaviour to his
own shadow this half-hour. Observe him, for the love of mockery, for
I know this letter will make an idiot of him. Hide, in the name of
jesting!... Lie thou there,” she added, throwing down a letter, “for
here comes the trout that must be caught with tickling.”
“It is but fortune--all is fortune,” murmured Malvolio, as he paced
along with solemn stride. “Maria once told me that she liked me, and
I have heard herself go so far as to say that if ever she fancied
anyone, it should be one of my complexion. Besides, she treats me with
more exalted respect than any one else of her followers. What should I
think of it?”
Malvolio’s imagination now soared beyond all bounds, and he marched up
and down, pluming himself like a turkey-cock.
“To be Count Malvolio!” he exclaimed in ecstasy, and forthwith began
to consider how he should comport himself in that exalted sphere.
“Having been three months married to her, sitting in my state,” he
mused, gesticulating to himself as if all he described were really
taking place, “calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet
gown, and telling them I knew my place, as I wished they should know
theirs, I would ask for my kinsman Toby. Seven of my people, with an
obedient start, make for him; I frown the while, and perchance wind
up my watch, or play with my--some rich jewel. Toby approaches, bows
humbly to me----”
“Shall this fellow live?” cried the exasperated real Sir Toby in the
box-tree.
“I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an
austere regard of control----”
“And does not Toby give you a blow on the lips then?” fumed the hearer.
“Saying, ‘Cousin Toby, my fortunes having cast me on your niece,
give me this privilege of speech. You must amend your drinking
habits. Besides, you waste the treasure of your time with a foolish
knight----’”
“That’s me, I warrant you,” put in Sir Andrew.
“One Sir Andrew----”
“I knew it was I, for many call me fool,” said Sir Andrew, quite
pleased at his own penetration.
But Malvolio’s imaginary rebuke to Sir Toby came abruptly to an end,
for he now caught sight of the letter which Maria had thrown on the
ground.
“What have we here? By my life, this is my lady’s hand; these are her
very C’s, her U’s, and her T’s; and thus she makes her great P’s.
Beyond all question it is her hand.” Then Malvolio read aloud the
inscription: “‘To the unknown beloved, this, and my good wishes.’ Her
very phrases! By your leave, wax. Soft! And the impression her own
seal! It is my lady. To whom should this be?”
The letter was written in the most nonsensical terms, but Malvolio at
once began to puzzle a meaning into it.
“Jove knows I love:
But who?
Lips do not move;
No man must know.”
“‘No man must know,’” he echoed. “If this should be thee, Malvolio!”
“I may command where I adore;
But silence, like a Lucrece knife,
With bloodless stroke my heart doth gore,
M, O, A, I, doth sway my life.”
Malvolio pondered deeply over these mystic lines. “I may command where
I adore” was, of course, quite simple. Olivia might command him, for
he was her servant. But what about the letters M, O, A, I?
“M--Malvolio; M--why, that begins my name!” came the sudden flash of
discovery.
The succeeding letters were not so easy to explain, for they did not
follow in their proper order. But Malvolio was not discouraged; he had
at least the satisfaction of knowing that every one of these letters
was in his name.
“Soft! There follows prose,” he continued.
“If this fall into thy hands, reflect,”
ran the absurd epistle. “In my stars I am above
thee, but be not afraid of greatness; some are
born great, some achieve greatness, and some have
greatness thrust upon them. Thy fates open their
hands, and to accustom thyself to what thou art
likely to be, throw off thy humble shell, and
appear afresh. Be opposite with a kinsman, surly
with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of
State; put thyself into the trick of singularity;
she thus advises thee that sighs for thee.
Remember who commended thy yellow stockings, and
wished to see thee ever cross-gartered--I say,
remember! Go to, thou art made, if thou desirest
to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward
still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to
touch Fortune’s fingers. Farewell. She that would
alter services with thee,
“THE FORTUNATE-UNHAPPY.”
There was also a postscript, which said:
“Thou canst not choose but know who I am. If
thou entertainest my love, let it appear in thy
smiling. Thy smiles become thee well, therefore
in my presence still smile, dear my sweet, I
prithee.”
This ridiculous letter quite turned poor Malvolio’s head. He never
doubted but that Olivia had really written it; he resolved in rapture
to do everything he was bidden, and hurried away to put on as quickly
as possible the yellow stockings and cross-garters.
Maria was delighted with the success of her trick, for all the things
she had commended to Malvolio were what Olivia especially disliked.
“He will come to my lady in yellow stockings, and it is a colour she
abhors,” she cried gleefully; “and cross-gartered, a fashion she
detests. And he will smile upon her, which will now be so unsuitable
to her disposition, being addicted to melancholy as she is, that it
cannot but turn him into great contempt.”
And away went Maria and the others to see the first approach of the
deluded Malvolio in his extraordinary new guise before his lady.