Twelfth Night--Hijinks? Or Bullying?

William Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night features as much as a comedy from that time period could feature. In addition to a ship-wreck, hijinks amongst servants and a somewhat rogue clown, the cross-dressing of a female character with a twin brother leads to a layering of confusion that builds over the duration of the story. In the spirit of “rom-coms,” the plot becomes completely unraveled and chaotic as the obstacles escalate and become stressfully large, only for the kinks to be worked out, the questions to be answered, and everyone to breath a huge sigh of relief that everything was a big misunderstanding. In the tradition of romantic comedies, “Twelfth Night is clearly concerned to show how many faces love and desire can have,” which is achieved by layering love-triangles on top of each other, and giving characters airy, one-dimensional personalities such as the hopeless romantic in Orsino or the bombastic Malvolio (Mangan 230). Even though Twelfth Night is comparatively one of the much lighter plays that Shakespeare has written, an argument could be made that the treatment of Malvolio is too cruel. Although Maria and Sir Toby do take their practical jokes a substantially far at times, the fact that he is never physically harmed and he is a very prideful and pretentious character, it seems Shakespeare is making a statement about the perfect punishment for being too proud, is humiliation.

From what we know of Shakespeare’s other plays, in no way is he hesitant in delivering punishments more gruesome to his worthy characters than being goaded into wearing the color yellow. In his tragedies, characters both good and bad are often stabbed, poisoned or drowned and in the case of another comedy, The Merchant of Venice, the guilty party is sentenced to be converted from Judaism to Christianity by force. If Shakespeare had intended to take victimize Malvolio, he would have had nothing standing in his way—but Shakespeare’s deliberate choice to stop at making a mockery of him in front of his employer suggests that in Malvolio’s case, "his is a character ripe for satire and comic comeuppance,” and not much else (Stephen Evans 6).

Malvolio makes himself a kind of target by the way he behaves. In the third scene of the second act, Maria tells Sir Toby and Sir Andrew that Malvolio is “kind of a Puritan,” to which Sir Andrew replies that had known that, he would have, “beat him like a dog,” (2.3.839-40). It’s easy for one to assume that Maria means to call him a Puritan in the religious meaning of the word, but at this point in time this word often represented the people that were pretentious and punctual to a fault. Malvolio is depicted as such, and with those qualities, he is also tightly wound, or what is modernly referred to sometimes as "Type-A". Because his character makes it a point to avoid idle time for relaxation and merriment, the struggle between Malvolio, and Maria and the others becomes a comedic depiction of, "the contentious relationship between two attitudes toward life: merrymaking. . . and sobriety," (Evans 9). Because of this personification, the teasing and joking at Malvolio's expense is necessary, not only to add comedic value, but to bring the struggle to life in a quarrel that is not harmful to either party, and deliver the justice of humiliation to the party guilty of pretension and pride.

Citations:

Evans, Stephen F. “Study Guide for Twelfth Night.” ENGL 332 Online Course Materials. The University of Kansas. Fall 2016. 1-11. Web.

Mangan, Michael. A Preface to Shakespeare’s Comedies: 1594-1603. London: Longman, 1996. Print.

Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or What you Will. The Norton Shakespeare: Essential Plays/The Sonnets. Gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2016. 477-542. Print

#Shakespeare #comedy #drama #sex #characterization #britlit