Twelfth Night (Vol. 26) | Robert Cushman (review date October 1969)
Robert Cushman (review date October 1969)
SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night, in Plays and Players, Vol. 17, No. 1, October, 1969, pp. 20-23.
But tell me true' asks Feste of Malvolio 'are you not mad indeed or doyou but counterfeit? A strange emphasis, and not, I think, one which many actors would employ of their own accord. It jerked me out of the stupor into which I had been cast by the slackest Sir Topas scene in my recollection, and set me wondering what Feste could possibly mean by it. A reference to bis own masquerade as Master Parson perhaps, but Malvolio is hardly in a position to see the joke. Anyway that seemed much too simple, too specific. There was about the delivery the weighty self-consciousness which Royal Shakespeare actors are apt to signal that though they cannot quite fit this reading into their characterisation they will do it this way to oblige the director who thinks that it has great thematic significance.
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