Malvolio: not a fan guy, but a careful reader.(Critical essay)

Sean Benson takes issue with common arguments that Malvolio's reading of Maria's letter in Twelfth Night 2.5 attacks Elizabethan Puritans' willful misinterpretations of the Bible. Though Benson acknowledges that Malvolio has been jokingly referred to by prankster Maria as a "puritan," he points out that Malvolio does not treat Mafia's forged letter in the way some Puritans, according to James I in Basilikon Doron (1603), mistreated the Bible, "making the Scriptures to be ruled by their conscience, and not their conscience by the Scripture." Instead, Malvolio very carefully reads the letter (which, it's worth saying, isn't the Bible, or anything even faintly moral), and interprets it …