The humor in the play of "Twelfth Night" resides in the contriving to
make one vice ridiculous by other vices which are also absurd. Not
one of the comic characters, taken separately, provides the peculiar
element of humor. It transpires during the impartial interplay of the
silliness of Aguecheek, the drunken techiness of Sir Toby, the spite of
Fabian, the mischievousness of Maria, and the immeasurable conceit of
Malvolio, who appeared not like a human being, but "as if he were his
own statue erected by national subscription." All these vices betray
themselves with such an infantile simplicity, and help each other to
construct so delightful a plot, that we feel, with the clown, perfectly
content to see "foolery walk about the orb like the sun." It is so
difficult to discriminate between follies when they protect themselves
by being so amusing, that we say with Viola,--
"I hate ingratitude more in a man,
Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness,
Or any taint of vice, whose strong corruption
Inhabits our frail blood."
We always have, as she did, some vice which we hate worse than others.
The one that is damned is generally the only one which would put us to
discomfort to practise. But humor can make for a time only those vices
companionable which turn a man into his own worst enemy and raise no
tragic threat against the State.
Malvolio, the steward of Olivia's household, is prized by that lady
for his grave and punctilious disposition. He discharges his office
carefully and in a tone of some superiority, for his mind is above his
estate. At some time in his life he has read cultivated books, knows
the theory of Pythagoras concerning the transmigration of the soul, but
thinks more nobly of the soul and no way approves that opinion. His
gentility, though a little rusted and obsolete, is like a Sunday suit
which nobody thinks of rallying. He wears it well, and his mistress
cannot afford to treat him exactly as a servant; in fact, she has
occasionally dropped good-natured phrases which he has interpreted into
a special partiality: for Quixotic conceits can riot about inside of
his stiff demeanor. This proneness to fantasy increases the touchiness
of a man of reserve. He can never take a joke, and his climate is too
inclement to shelter humor. Souls must be at blood-heat, and brains
must expand with it like a blossom, before humor will fructify. He
wonders how Olivia can tolerate the clown. "I protest," he says, "I
take these wise men, that crow so at these set kind of fools, to be no
better than the fools' zanies." Olivia hits the difficulty when she
replies, "Oh, you are sick of self-love, and taste with a distempered
appetite." Perhaps he thinks nobly of the soul because he so profoundly
respects his own, and carries it upon stilts over the heads of the
servants and Sir Toby and Sir Andrew.
Imagine this saturnine and self-involved man obliged to consort
daily with Sir Toby, who brings his hand to the buttery-bar before
breakfast, and who hates going to bed "as an unfilled can," unless no
more drink is forthcoming; an irascible fellow, too, and all the more
tindery because continually dry. He has Sir Andrew Aguecheek for a
boon companion, who says of himself that sometimes he has no more wit
than a Christian, or than an ordinary man. When he is not in liquor he
is fuddled with inanity, and chirps and skips about, deluding himself
with the notion that Olivia will receive his addresses. Sir Toby, to
borrow money of him, fosters the notion, and flatters his poor tricks.
Then there is that picador of a clown, who plants in Malvolio's thin
skin a perfect quickset of barbed quips, and sends him lowering around
the mansion which these roisterers have turned into a tavern. The
other servant, Fabian, has a grudge against him for interfering with
a bear-baiting he was interested in; for Malvolio was one of those
Puritans who frowned upon that sport, as Macaulay said, not because
it worried the bear but because it amused the men. The steward was
right when he informed this precious set that they were idle, shallow
things, and he was not of their element. No doubt he is the best man of
the lot. But he interrupts their carousing at midnight in such a sour
and lofty way that we are entertained to hear their drunken chaffing,
and we call to Maria for another stoup, though they have had too much
already; but a fresh exposition of dryness always sets in when such
a virtue as Malvolio's tries to wither us. However, he becomes the
object of their animosity, and they work in his distemper to make him
ridiculous.
There is no humor in seeing Malvolio fall so easily a prey to their
device. When a man becomes the cause of his own mortification, it is
simply comic. But the intrigue becomes humorous when his vice shows
disgust at theirs, and theirs becomes indignant at his, and they are
delighted to see it well ventilated. For so do we revenge ourselves
upon each other, using not our strength which would be tragic, but
our weaknesses. Then impartial justice is obliged to smile to see
these counterplots of folly further its great plan. What economy it is
to have individuals so contrived that they can baffle, mortify, and
school each other without importing the constable! We are self-acting
arrangements to relieve the universe from tax and keep its hilarity
replenished. In this genial manner "the whirligig of time brings in his
revenges." Even if we do not lie in wait for each other, the knowledge
of mutual frailties gives our whole life a sub-taste of humor; and that
leaves respect upon the tongue.
Sebastian says to the clown: "I prithee vent thy folly somewhere else."
Mankind makes the clown's answer: "Vent my folly! He has heard that
word of some great man, and now applies it to a fool. Vent my folly! I
am afraid this great lubberly world will prove a cockney." No fear of
that, my "corrupter of words;" so long as perfect discretion is unknown
upon the earth, we are all cosmopolites of infirmity and speak the
great language of smiles.
But the play does not let Malvolio drop softly on his feet. There is a
faint grudge provoked by the ill-tempered quality of his conceit, and
Shakspeare indicates this trait of our nature. The clown, who remembers
how the steward used to twit Olivia's contentment at his sallies, and
to deprecate it in a lofty way, now mimics his phrases and manner to
sting him with a last fluttering dart. Malvolio's pride is already too
deeply wounded, for he has indeed been "notoriously abused." There is
no relenting in such a man on account of the fun, for that is a crime
in the eyes of a Puritan, to be punished for God's sake. His temper
acquires sombreness from his belief that total depravity is a good
doctrine if you can only live up to it. But when this crime of fun is
perpetrated against the anointed self-esteem of the Puritan himself,
it is plain he will be revenged on the whole pack of them unless they
proceed to make a sop of deference to touch his hurt with, and a pipe
out of his own egotism for sounding a truce.
Shakspeare delighted to mark the transition of a virtue to a vice;
that elusive moment, as of a point of passage from one species to
another, discovered and put into a flash from the light of humor.
Malvolio's grave and self-respecting temperament is an excellence.
No decent man thinks meanly of himself, and the indecent ones cannot
afford the disparagement. The pretence of it is a warning to us to
expect mischief, a notice put up, "This is a private way; dangerous
passing." Whatever gift a man has becomes a divine permission for
self-consideration. Modesty is the humanity of a great mind, a
vapor which the sun instinctively gathers to make itself tolerable.
For instance, the profits of the Globe and Curtain Theatres helped
Shakspeare to his orchards and house in Stratford, but his poverty
in the matter of conceit furnished and made the New Place habitable.
The neighbor gossips did not have his "greatness thrust upon them."
Precisely because he was virtuous there were cakes and ale, and his
jests, no doubt, were spicy in the mouth too. This man who travailed
in secret with his glorious brood had nothing in his manner to record
"Those daily, nightly drippings in the dark
Of the heart's blood."
Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear were not known to be in town. These mighty
shapes, silently content to wait till a world's worship matched them,
forbore to bully the villagers. In time whole nations were mustered in,
so that his manifold greatness could be met on an equal footing. But
their gentle peer left posterity to beat the drum for this service.
But all men pardon that occasional frankness of egotism which is like
lifting a window for clear light to pass through, so that we recognize
that a commander is in the street.
Now, Malvolio's sobriety, his contempt for guzzling and roaring of
catches, his measured deportment, his nice and cleanly ways are
commendable results of his self-opinion, and cannot yield any advantage
to low fellows for roughing him until the decent pace of his austerity
becomes a strut. One of the characters in a late novel says, "When
I see people strut enough to be cut up into bantam-cocks, I stand
dormant with wonder, and says no more." This tendency of Nature to a
peacock is discovered in the very act, at the moment of production, by
this lens of a smile with which we arm our eye. Malvolio is like the
fanatical England of the Commonwealth, which was flouted and dishonored
by the Aguecheeks and Belches of King Charles II., those inevitable
conspirers against immoderate and arrogant sobriety. They are sure
to come. "Nay, I'll come," says Fabian, "if I lose a scruple of this
sport, let me be boiled to death with melancholy." Yes, the niggard
fellow shall "come by some notable shame." Says Sir Toby, "To anger
him, we'll have the bear again;" which England did to her heart's
content; but the discredit must be shared by the epoch which strove to
strut in the sad conceit that gladness was the sin against the Holy
Ghost.