The problem of Malvolio.

The origins of the main plot in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night have been traced to a cluster of earlier comedies and their derivatives; however, the subplot, involving Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, Maria, and their "gull," Malvolio, was entirely Shakespeare's invention.(1) Like the main story, the Malvolio subplot also involves comic "errors," disguise and performance, and the pursuit of marriage. It similarly explores the themes of identity, desire, and the confusion of both. In fact, the "gulling" of Malvolio and Sir Toby's debauched revelry literalize the "misrule" of the main story. But the subplot does not resolve itself as neatly as the main plot does; indeed, it fails to resolve itself at all. It might be supposed, then, that Shakespeare sought to counter the easy connubial resolutions inherent in his sources with something more problematic, thereby adding to the comic ending of the play something of a tragic one. Joel Fineman wrote that Malvolio "plays the role of the outsider whose unhappiness is the measure of comic spirit, the alternative to comedy that makes us value the comic all the more" (33). To take this idea one step further, we can say that Malvolio alerts us to the necessity of comedy and to the profound implications of its failure. In a sense, with the problem of Malvolio, Shakespeare answers the question: What if things in Illyria hadn't turned out so well?

The source of this potential for failure is the comic force that drives both the subplot and the main story: "misrule." The subtitle of the play, Or, What you will, offers an ambiguous but provocative addition to our understanding of the "misrule" that was an important element of traditional Twelfth Night celebrations. "Will" has been generally interpreted as "volition" or "desire," so as to suggest that the logic of the play turns on wishful thinking rather than an objective reality. But in the saturnalian tradition, "what you will" also refers to identity, as in "what you will be." The narcissistic desires of Orsino and Olivia and the strategic disguise of Viola suggest that one's identity, social or personal, is derived from one's desire. Consider Olivia's question to Viola/Cesario, "What are you? What would you?" (1.5.212-213). Here, identity and desire become almost synonymous, perhaps because under the confusion of misrule both are ambiguous. Further, in Renaissance England, whom one married was an important factor in determining one's identity, particularly if a change in social rank was involved. Thus "what you will," in this comedy of courtship and marriage, also means "whom you will have" or "who will have you." In the complicated love triangle of these characters, misrule is the rule, and real desire and real identity become temporarily lost in a conflation of poses and possibilities.

Malvolio also confuses identity and desire when, walking in Olivia's garden, he muses, "To be Count Malvolio!" (2.5.35). But we know that Malvolio's fantasy is a pose without possibility. He is a literal example of the Italian malvoglio, which means "ill will," but here also seems to imply "wrong desire." Malvolio's sin is not only his alienating behavior toward others in the household, but also both the inappropriate desire to marry his mistress and rise in social rank and the sin of "self-love." The punishment for such sins, as he discovers, is severe. By comparison, the desiring characters of the main story, confused though they may be, commit no wrong and receive no punishment. The narcissism of Orsino and Olivia, while potent, is less overt or perhaps an allowed vice of the aristocracy. Likewise, while pursuing Orsino in conscious disguise, Viola goes safely, if miraculously, undetected. Although the plights of the characters of the main story do suggest the precariousness and risk inherent in the confusion of identity and desire, which will be the locus and necessary prescription of the Malvolio subplot, these characters are nonetheless successful. Ultimately, for Viola, Sebastian, Olivia, and Orsino, "what you will" is an invitation to comic possibility; for Malvolio, however, it is an invitation to personal tragedy.(2)

If identity and desire function in the psychological realm, they also do in the social realm. The dialogic relation between plot and subplot, I submit, works on both levels; and herein lies a crucial difference between the plots. Whereas the main plot invokes a fantastical, almost timeless space, where an unchallenged aristocracy enjoys tremendous (if limited) emotional freedom, the subplot is more historically-specific, more obviously grounded in Elizabethan social relations: a reflection not of another time and place, like Illyria, but of England at the end of the 16th Century. As a result, the characters in the main plot are not ultimately obliged to act in a world with real consequences, while Malvolio most certainly is. Such an obligation or lack thereof is fundamental to the projection of a "self" in that world. With this difference in mind, the project of this essay will be to describe Malvolio's struggle with his identity and desires as historical and psychological "facts" that is, by historicizing the role of the household steward and his social sphere, and by investigating the possible contributions of modern identity theory. Then, I will read the elements of Malvolio's struggle back through the main plot in an effort to more fully describe the relation between the two plots.

Although much has been said of the meaning of Twelfth Night's subtitle, its specific connection to the play's subplot seems to have gone unnoticed. Olivia is the only character in the play to actually utter the words of the subtitle, when she says to Malvolio, "If it be a suit from the count, I am sick, or not at home what you will to dismiss it" (1.5.109-110, emphasis added). In telling Malvolio to use his discretion as steward and to do "what [he] will," Olivia gives him permission to use any form of falseness to prevent the disruption of her mourning. Although we later realize, through her sudden infatuation with Viola/Cesario, that Olivia's mournful intentions are not altogether sincere, her cloistered behavior is in fact in Malvolio's best interest: it makes him indispensable. I argue, then, that Olivia's command to do "what you will" formally initiates the Malvolio subplot, not only because it invokes verbatim the subtitle of the play, but more importantly because, as we shall see, it reveals much about Malvolio's position as Olivia's trusted steward and the paradoxical role of a steward in a household with neither a master nor a masterly mistress.

While we tend to think of Malvolio as an ambitious social climber who rejects his middle-class origins in hopes of marrying into nobility, we cannot be at all certain that this is what Shakespeare had in mind.(3) In most sixteenth-century aristocratic households, particularly those of important noblemen, the steward had his own status. He was often a kinsman of the master and invariably a man of gentle birth. Indeed, during the parliaments of Elizabeth's reign, at least 190 members were, had been, or would become stewards (Hainsworth 7). When the steward was the head servant of the household, as was often the case, he commanded great respect. Thus, Spenser writes in The Faerie Queen (1590): "The first of them that eldest was and best/ Of all the house had charge and government/ As Guardian and Steward of the rest" (1.10.37.3). The "rest" in a noble household of the period may have been up to a hundred servants and dependents, over whom the steward had sway and kept order (Stone 29). As implied by the name of "Order," the steward in Massinger's A New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1630), the keeping of order in the household was the steward's prime objective, and for this reason, he was often likely to be unpopular with the lesser servants. However, this responsibility offered the steward privileges as well. Regardless of his social origins, he dressed as an aristocrat and followed the fashions of the day.(4) Because he often acted as a representative of the master and saw to the comfort of guests and visitors, a well-dressed steward reflected positively on the wealth and status of the master.

But this is not to say that the steward had a clearly defined sense of power. In fact, the great challenge of stewardship during the Renaissance was to deftly negotiate the blurred line between responsibility and authority. His position was inherently an ambiguous one.(5) Although, as the representative of the master, the steward had a nominal charge of the household, in reality he rarely made important decisions without consulting its head. Lawrence Stone argued that all household servants, stewards included, were considered "equal with children as subordinate members of the household" (27).(6) Although this may be somewhat overstated, it does suggest that, while the steward was often charged with the duties and even the authority of a master, he was rarely treated like one. Moreover, the steward's position was inexorably linked to the fortunes of the household, which at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century were under constant threat of instability. As the size of the aristocratic household decreased during the period of great social, political and economic upheaval of the elite that preceded the English Revolution, the power and significance of the household steward consequently declined.(7)

This combination of inherent ambiguity and decreasing power undoubtedly presented real problems for the steward of a noble household, such as Malvolio. When we consider further that the death of Olivia's father, followed shortly by that of her brother, has left the household without a paterfamilias, we may suppose an even greater difficulty.(8) The lack of a patriarch might have required greater responsibility on the part of the steward, but it did not usually mean that he was given more authority. It appears that the many contradictions involved in stewardship were satisfactorily contained by the presence, or at least the existence, of the paterfamilias; with the…