[In the following essay, Champion argues that Twelfth Night features some of Shakespeare's most well-developed comic characters whose true but hidden identities are revealed over the course of the drama.]

It is commonplace to speak of the different kinds of Shakespearean comedy. The “happy” or “joyous” comedies, for instance, are contrasted with the “enigmatic” or “problem” comedies on the one hand and the “philosophic” or “divine” comedies on the other. And, among the first group, we are sometimes told that The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a less successful “romantic” comedy than Much Ado About Nothing or that Twelfth Night is pure comedy whereas As You Like It incorporates potentially tragic motifs. In a broad sense, of course, the attitudes toward life expressed by comedy can range from the satiric to the sentimental, the farcical to the melodramatic—distinctions invariably based upon the nature of the plot. With Shakespeare's comedy, an equally valuable insight is gained through an investigation of the characterizations and the devices by which they are rendered humorous, a perspective which suggests that Shakespeare's concern was not with different kinds of comedy but rather with plots involving an increasingly complex depth of characterization. Obviously Shakespeare began with plot—not character,¹ but the kind of characterization demanded by these plots reveals both his changing interests and his increasing abilities.

More precisely, comedy can avoid individual characterization by focusing entirely on the humor of physical action; or it can stress the disparity between appearance and reality—what in his society a character sets himself out to be as opposed to what he is in reality behind the social mask; or it can portray an experience involving a spiritual catharsis which transforms a personality or reconstitutes an entire society. In other words, a comic dramatist can depict character to any depth which is appropriate to his narrative. The character who inhabits a stage-world in which evil is a reality and who is involved in ethical and moral decisions through which the spectators see into the foundations of his personality is completely human; portrayed on the level of “faith,” he undergoes an experience—like those of the great tragic figures—which effects a basic transformation of values. The character who inhabits a stage-world in which there is no fundamental evil to force decisions revealing his spiritual or philosophic values is, of course, removed from reality. Yet, when—on the social plane—he pretends to be something which he is not, the gap between appearance and reality becomes material for comedy. In this situation the comic experience for the character is one of self-revelation; portrayed on the level of “identity,” he is humorously forced to recognize or to acknowledge his true nature. It is primarily of such drama that Northrop Frye is speaking when he remarks that comedy “is designed not to condemn evil, but to ridicule a lack of self-knowledge.”² The character who is delineated only on the level of “physical action” never invites our response to him as an individual. Our detachment complete, the comedy is that of manipulation, and the humor is drawn not from character involvement or character incongruity but rather from our observation of puppet-like characters maneuvered into ludicrous situations.

Shakespeare, whose development as a comic playwright is consistently in the direction of complexity or depth of characterization, deals with each of these levels of characterization. His earliest works are essentially situation comedies; the humor arises from action rather than character. There is no significant development of the main characters; instead, they are manipulated into situations which are humorous as a result, for example, of mistaken identity and slapstick confusion. Thus, the characters are revealed only in terms of what they do, outer action. The Antipholuses and the Dromios of The Comedy of Errors are cases in point, manipulated as they are amidst a confused wife, courtesan, kitchen wench, sea captain, and goldsmith. So also the princess with her ladies in Love's Labor's Lost are played puppet-like against Ferdinand and his lords who have renounced sex for Academe. In A Midsummer Night's Dream the Athenian lovers—Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius—are puppets manipulated into ridiculous self-contradiction by Oberon and Puck. The ensuing phase of Shakespeare's comedy sets forth plots in which the emphasis is on identity—character revelation—rather than physical action. This revelation occurs in one of two forms; either a hypocrite is exposed for what he actually is or a character who has assumed an unnatural or abnormal pose is forced to realize and admit the ridiculousness of his position. Of the first type Malvolio and Don John are prime illustrations, their true nature hidden from the other characters for much of the play by their moral hypocrisy. Of the second type, Benedick, Beatrice, and Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing and Orsino and Olivia in Twelfth Night are characters, for example, whose experiences reveal to themselves as well as to others their true personalities. With individuals of either type, actions are a facade to conceal true identity; and, to the extent that the spectator is aware of this incongruency, the hypocrisy on the one hand and the lack of self-knowledge on the other are ridiculous and the ultimate exposure humorous. Admittedly there is no fundamental transformation of character; yet the false pride which blinds one to fully knowing himself is purged. In any case, the emphasis in these comedies is on the ridiculousness of the character, not his danger to society; he is funny, not evil, because in these stage-worlds we assume that normality will ultimately prevail and that he will never be allowed to engage in activities of permanent consequence either to himself or to others. In the final comedies, however, involving sin and sacrificial forgiveness, character development is concerned with a revelation of faith.³ In these stage-worlds the power of evil is not harmlessly contained within a circle of wit; and the characters, struggling on the fringe of comedy, must cope with the actual consequences of sin moral and political. The “comic” transformation of, for instance, Leontes in The Winter's Tale or of Antonio, Alonso, and Sebastian in The Tempest is the result of a character's conversion to belief in a universe controlled by a principle of love most fully realized in its redemptive powers.

The fully developed character obviously creates problems for the dramatist who must maintain a comic perspective for the spectator or see his narrative turn to melodrama or tragicomedy. Since the spectator's involvement with physical action does not extend beyond the superficial laughter that a humorous situation arouses, the playwright—to the extent that he can maintain such a perspective—has no difficulty in achieving a comic tone for “flat” characters who make no ethical decisions. On the other hand, with greater character complexity, the spectator is provoked into emotional identification with character and situation, and his comic perspective is blurred. Whether the Renaissance comic form took shape primarily from “Saturnalian release” or from “Terentian intrigue,” the dramatic experience which is to divert rather than distress is possible only so long as the spectator is either emotionally detached from the characters or, if emotionally involved with them, in possession of such knowledge or provoked into such a mood as to be assured of a happy end accomplished by means which only temporarily appear unpleasant. Consequently, as Shakespeare's conception of character expanded, so also did his problem of maintaining a proper perspective for the spectator.⁴ His success is the result of experimentation with a kind of comic pointer or comic controller who is himself involved in the action and yet whose relationships with the other characters or whose actions and comments provide us a sufficiently omniscient view—whether he himself possesses this view or not—for us to rest secure that an impenetrable circle of wit has exorcised any dangers of permanent consequence.⁵

An investigation of the level of characterization and the method of comic control in Twelfth Night underscores the significance of the play in the evolution of Shakespeare's comedy. In his richest comic creation to this point,⁶ with character developed on the level of identity as well as on the level of action, Shakespeare has moved far beyond the one-dimensional character of farce. At the same time, he has achieved one of his most successful integrations of comic device and character revelation. Through association with Viola, Sebastian, Feste, and Maria, each of the other characters reveals his abnormal or hypocritical posture, comes to understand his true nature, and is absorbed into a normal society. The twins Viola and Sebastian, separated in a storm antecedent to the action of the play and reunited in the fifth act, are the primary comic pointers in that they establish the proper comic perspective for the spectator by providing the information necessary to create the dramatic irony.⁷ Their apparent shifts in personality—Viola's disguise and the subsequent mistaken identity—produce actual exposures in the surrounding characters. Feste and Maria, a second pair of comic pointers outside the primary action, serve a similar function for the low characters. These four characters, in no way self-deceived, create a rapport with the spectator; and their comments function to provide information about others necessary to guide the laughter.

Concerning the level of characterization in Twelfth Night, the basis for comedy, more specifically, is the incongruity between action and identity.⁸ Major characters at the outset attempt to hide their real nature behind a facade of physical action which is eventually revealed as a mere pose—Olivia as a victim of fashionable melancholia, Orsino as the disconsolate and unrequited lover, Malvolio as the puritanical jack-in-office.

The duke, like Romeo in love with the idea of love, strikes an immediate tone of hyperbolic sentimentalizing as he revels in the music which feeds his passion. In love with Olivia at first sight, he delights in the fancy of puns to describe his languishment:

That instant was I turn'd into a hart;
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E'er since pursue me.

(I, i, 21-23)⁹

Informed in no uncertain terms that Olivia is unreceptive to his suit, he is nonetheless determined to pursue his love when we see him three scenes later unclasping to Viola (Cesario) “the book even of [his] secret soul.” Now, however, he is to woo by deputy both because he assumes Olivia “will attend it better in thy [the page's] youth” (I, iv, 27) and because, as he himself admits, he is “best / When least in company” (I, iv, 37-38). Thus far, then, the spectator is confronted with a melodramatic duke who, while avowing an overwhelming love, admits to a preference for solitude at the same time he commands another to continue his suit.

In the duke's next appearance (II, iv), two remarks, in the midst of his continued pose, signal his true identity as a prideful man infatuated with the social pose of the romantic lover. First, his description to Cesario of feminine beauty simply does not correspond with his Petrarchan posture. While he mouths praise to Olivia's immortal beauty, he advises Cesario rather cynically to find a lover younger than he, “For women are as roses, whose fair flower / Being once display'd doth fall that very hour” (II, iv, 39-40).¹⁰ Secondly, in the course of his conversation he flatly contradicts himself in comparing the quality of a man's love with that of a woman's. At one point he says:

Our [men's] fancies are more giddy and unfirm,
More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn,
Than women's are.

(II, iv, 34-36)

Yet, a few lines later he avers:

There is no woman's sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart
So big, to hold so much. They lack retention.
.....                                                                                                              Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.

(II, iv, 96-99, 104-106)

Even though the duke again calls for music to feed his passion and listens to Feste's song describing the melancholy death of a distraught lover, his contradiction in advising one concept of love for Cesario and claiming another for his personal commitment reflects intellectual toying with the idea of love rather than a direct emotional involvement in it.

When Orsino appears again in the final act, his actions render his character revelation complete. Both the rapidity with which he can turn angrily on Olivia and the poised alacrity with which he can accept Cesario (now Viola) as his heart's substitute reveal how deeply indeed he has been committed to the stakes of love! When the countess first enters, Orsino speaks metaphorically of heaven walking on earth. But, his suit again rejected as “fat and fulsome,” he suddenly alters his metaphor to “perverseness,” “uncivil lady,” and, instead of heaven and its shrines, speaks of her “ingrate and unauspicious altars” (V, i, 115-16). The “marble-breasted tyrant” has made his thoughts “ripe in mischief” as he threatens to tear her minion (Cesario) out of her cruel eye as a sacrifice to her disdain. In effect, within the space of a few short lines his unbounded love has been exploded by an equally unbounded temper. The second shift is even more revelatory of the true quality of his love. When Olivia's husband is produced, Orsino, at the point of being outfaced altogether, determines to “share in this happy wreck.” He agrees to take Viola to wife asking to see her in woman's weeds, later even foregoing that precaution.

The development of Orsino's character, then, takes the form of revelation to himself and to others. His Petrarchan pose for Olivia is revealed as merely the cover for a man enjoying the fascination of his romantic adventure and too proud to accept rejection.¹¹

The incongruities in Olivia's character are developed even more extensively throughout the drama. Her true identity is that of a normal young lady capable both of loving and being loved and possessing a sense of humor which enables her to understand and appreciate the good fun in a practical joke. This personality she attempts to conceal, however, through her actions. And, as a result of this melancholy pose, her reputation for morbid solemnity has grown throughout the land.

Although the countess does not appear on stage until the final scene of the first act, her haughty posture is established through prior conversation. For instance, in Scene ii the spectator is told that, because of the recent deaths of her father and brother, Olivia “hath abjured the company / And sight of men” and “will admit no kind of suit” (ll. 40-41, 45). More specifically, we learn in Scene i that she intends to wear the veil of mourning for full seven years and to “water once a day her chamber round / With eye-offending brine” (ll. 29-30). When the jocularity of her household in Scene iii appears inappropriate to her pose, she remains in character through a mild reprimand to Sir Toby Belch delivered by Maria:

Your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours. … That quaffing and drinking will undo you. I heard my lady talk of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight that you brought in one night to be her wooer.

(I, iii, 5-6, 14-17)

Olivia's posture, then, is clear before she appears on stage. Determined to mourn her relatives beyond normal bounds, she will reject all suitors and will soberly hold herself aloof from the slightest household merriment. Interestingly, Sir Toby's best comment on her pose is the suitor (Sir Andrew Aguecheek) whom he has cast in the face of her resolution to abjure the society of men.

This facade of character dissolves, at least for the spectator, at her first appearance on stage. For in the lengthy final scene of Act I, Feste flatly proclaims the absurdity of her attitude, and, later, with Cesario she is unable to maintain the posture she has so carefully cultivated. At our first glimpse, she is testily chastizing Feste for his having been so long absent from the house and for his continued foolishness. The clown, however, as Cesario is to do later, confronts her with polite but firm rebuttal, mockingly proving her a fool for her protracted melancholy:

CLO.
Good madonna, why mournest thou?
OLI.
Good fool, for my brother's death.
CLO.
I think his soul is in hell, madonna.
OLI.
I know his soul is in heaven, fool.
CLO.
The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven. Take away the fool, gentlemen.

(I, v, 72-78)

Her genuine nature is further revealed as she, not altogether displeased with Feste's wit, defends his catechism against Malvolio's charges. Even so, she is in no way ready to drop her demeanor. When a messenger arrives to plead Orsino's case, she orders Malvolio to report that she is sick or not at home. And, when Cesario's persistence prevails, she calls for her veil—the physical symbol of her artificial pose. Not awed by Olivia's cold and haughty disdain, Cesario frankly accuses her of being “the cruell'st she alive” and “too proud.” The countess, though supposedly abjuring the sight of men for the sake of her brother's memory, listens with obvious delight—but her interest is in the messenger, not the message. The result is a flagrant revelation of the insincerity of her earlier posture as she not only displays a normal and healthy interest in what she assumes to be the opposite sex but is willing to act the aggressor's role in her affair of the heart. To that end she encourages Cesario to come again for further consultation and sends him a ring on the pretense that she is returning what he had earlier forced upon her. In the final moments of the act, she voices her dilemma in soliloquy:

Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit
Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast! Soft, soft!
Unless the master were the man. How now!
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth's perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes.

(I, v, 311-317)

Her two appearances in Act III develop further the contrast between her true nature and her assumed posture. Her pursuit of Cesario more pronounced, she is not without moments of remorse as she realizes the indignity of her actions. For instance, in Scene i she tells Cesario not to be afraid, that she will pursue no further (ll. 141, 143), and in Scene iv she laments:

I have said too much unto a heart of stone,
And laid mine honour too unchary on't.
There's something in me that reproves my fault.

(ll. 221-223)

She is unable to contain her love, however, and at this point openly declares her affection:

Cesario, by the roses of spring,
By maidhood, honour, truth, and everything,
I love thee so, that, maugre all thy pride,
Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide.

(III, i, 161-164)

Moreover, a short time later she becomes ridiculously flustered at Cesario's very approach:

I have sent after him; he says he'll come.
How shall I feast him? What bestow of him?
For youth is bought more oft than begg'd or borrow'd.
I speak too loud.—

(III, iv, 1-4)

In truth, her love for Cesario is no less outrageous than Malvolio's for her, once the steward has become convinced that he is the secret object of her attention.

By the end of the third act Olivia's true identity has been fully revealed to the spectators. Her remaining actions leading to marriage will complete the revelation to the other characters as well. For, in the following scenes Sebastian, who has replaced Viola and who admittedly is bewildered by the advances of the beautiful countess, is nevertheless willing to receive them and to tell her that he, “having sworn truth, ever will be true.”

Malvolio is perhaps the most obvious illustration of comic character incongruity. As Olivia's steward he pulls moral rank on everyone in her household and delights in contrasting his grave prudence with their apparent hedonism. Even Olivia, herself engrossed in sombre lamentation for her deceased brother, perceives the excess prudishness in his manner:

O, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with a distemper'd appetite. To be generous, guiltless, and of free disposition, is to take those things for bird-bolts that you deem cannon-bullets.

(I, v, 97-101)

Similarly, Maria in a later scene expresses concern that Toby's late carousals have awakened Malvolio, who—as anticipated—rushes in and exclaims against the “caterwauling” and the “gabbl[ing] like tinkers at this time of night.” He in effect orders them out of the house unless greater self-discipline is exercised, singling out Maria for especial chastisement. Because of his grave disposition Olivia later summons him to entertain Cesario: “He [Malvolio] is sad and civil, / And suits well for a servant with my fortunes” (III, iv, 5-6).

When Malvolio appears before the countess, however, his true nature is showing as a result of his avarice. His puritanical facade, labeled time-serving by Maria, has been profitable only so long as he was convinced such posture was desired by his employer. Since he is motivated by ambition rather than principle, he now hesitates not a moment to accept a diametrically opposite pattern of action. His erstwhile grave face is lined with the wrinkles of a plastered smile; his conservative attire is replaced with cross-gartered yellow stockings. As commanded in the note which he assumes to be Olivia's, he is “opposite with kinsmen, surly with servants,” and his “tongue tang[s] arguments of state.” Olivia, amazed at Malvolio's antics and shocked at the effrontery of his remark that he will come to her bed, declares “this is very midsummer madness.” Later, Feste (Sir Topas) exorcises the evil spirit from the steward, who refuses to pray in his new role as a festive gallant. And, as from the dark room Malvolio accurately parrots the orthodox answers to the theological questions posed by Sir Topas, the spectator observes how distant indeed is this religion of action from his religion of words. The action, then, has flayed the pious cover and revealed the obsession of ego and ambition from which his personality suffers.

Revelation of the disparity between action and identity in Twelfth Night involves several of the minor characters as well. Aguecheek, for instance, masks his cowardice behind a volley of words and fatuously challenges the reluctant Cesario to a duel, but his courage persists only so long as his agressor's timidity.¹² So also, Sir Toby stakes his pursuit of the jolly life on his ability to control any situation which he creates—and here he fails physically in his inability to manipulate Sebastian (whom Aguecheek has unwittingly provoked) and emotionally in his inability to control his fascination for Maria (to whom he loses the freedom of his bachelorhood). Even Antonio and the theme of friendship are not exempt from Shakespeare's pattern. When Sebastian reveals his identity to his rescuer and describes his destination, the sea captain hyperbolically pledges his affection: “If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant. … [C]ome what may, I do adore thee so, / That danger shall seem sport, and I will go” (II, i, 36-37, 48-49). Similarly, his love and “jealousy what might befall your travel, / Being skilless in these parts” motivate Antonio to accompany Sebastian despite his own physical danger resulting from his previous banishment from Illyria for engaging in a sea-fight. With magnanimous affection he forces his purse upon Sebastian, and without hesitation he later intervenes in the duel between Aguecheek and Viola (whom he assumes to be Sebastian), swearing that he “for his love dares yet do more / Than you have heard him brag to you he will” (III, iv, 347-348). But the hyperbole proves bitter when Sebastian appears to deny knowledge of him or his money:

… O, how vile an idol proves this god!
Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.
In nature there's no blemish but the mind;
None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind.
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil
Are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil.

(ll. 399-404)

When next on stage (V, i), he speaks of the “false cunning” of the cold and deceitful thief. And his wrath abates only when the twins are onstage in the final scene. Antonio's friendship, then, has faced the human problems of confusion and misunderstanding, and his reactions have reflected the variable effects of such problems on the personality. Aguecheek, Toby, and Antonio, in short, provide an appropriate background for Shakespeare's portrayal of character revelation.

Incongruity between a character's surface action and his true identity is, of course, only the basis for comedy. The realization, as previously described, depends upon the success with which the dramatist uses comic devices to achieve a perspective from which the spectator will enjoy the situations which dislodge the characters from their abnormal posture. In Twelfth Night, the comedy of the first three acts results from the spectator's awareness, through the comic pointer, of the role that each character is playing and of the fact that the role is a pose; the humor of Act IV arises from the pointer's forcing each character into action contradictory to his pose which reveals his true nature to the other characters. And, in Act V with both twins on stage and with each character forced to eat the humble pie of exposure, the comic catharsis is achieved and each character restored to normality.

Shakespeare carefully sets up his pointers early in Act I. In Scene ii Viola describes the shipwreck which she has survived, a twin brother of whose life she is uncertain, and the disguise of eunuch which she will assume for reasons of safety as she travels to Orsino's court. Her ability to moderate her grief for Sebastian provides a foil for the excessive nature of Olivia's mourning. The following scene introduces Olivia and her household, with Maria tolerantly chiding Toby for his late hours and openly flouting the fatuousness of Sir Andrew. In Scene iv Viola assumes her disguise as Cesario and quickly gains favor with her new master. At this point the dramatic irony becomes significant for the function of the comic pointer as Orsino unwittingly sends female to woo female and thus subconsciously reflects the artificiality of his passion. The final scene of the act introduces Feste as a clown who travels in the households of both Orsino and Olivia. He immediately establishes himself as one who dispassionately observes this circle from the outside, with remarks such as: “Those wits, that think they have thee, do very oft prove fools; and I, that am sure I lack thee, may pass for a wise man” and “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit” (I, v, 36-40). And his first action is mockingly to reveal to the countess and to the audience the foolishness of her inordinate mourning. In the ensuing scene Shakespeare inserts a brief moment to reveal that Sebastian is indeed alive. Since he too is moving toward Orsino's court and since Viola's disguise is masculine, the comic trap of mistaken identity is constructed, and the middle acts will bait virtually every aspect of the trap in order that the catastrophe or resolution of the final act will be more effective.

The comic pointers introduced, the major portion of the plot now utilizes the rapport created between Viola (and later Sebastian) and the spectator to effect the comic exposure of Olivia, Orsino, Aguecheek, Belch, and Antonio. Feste and Maria will successfully exploit Malvolio's presumptuous nature. The steward—whether patterned after William Ffarrington,¹³ Sir Ambrose Willoughby,¹⁴ Sir William Knollys,¹⁵ or none of these—functions in the context to heighten the absurdity of Olivia's romantic liaison with Cesario in Act III by himself becoming her lover.¹⁶ To carry out Malvolio's duping and derision, Shakespeare prepares these servant figures who move in his circle and have the best opportunity to know his true nature.

Viola, far from being a totally disinterested person, is enamored of Orsino though her masculine disguise renders any such relationship ludicrous—just as ludicrous as Olivia's passion for Cesario. But her primary function in the play is to reveal Olivia's hypocrisy to the spectator so that he might fully appreciate the process of comic deflation which will restore the countess to normality. To this end, once the touchstone relationship is established, Viola in soliloquy carefully identifies Olivia's infatuation for the spectator:

Fortune forbid my outside have not charm'd her!
.....She loves me, sure. The cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
.....Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
.....How will this fadge? My master loves thee dearly;
And I, poor monster, fond as much on him;
And she, mistaken, seems to dote on me.

(II, ii, 19, 23-24, 27, 34-36)

In two later scenes (II, i; III, iv) as Olivia becomes increasingly the agressor, Cesario warns her that “I am not what I am” and that, in light of her haughty pose of immunity to romance, she is pitifully deceiving herself: “You do think you are not what you are” (III, i, 151).

Once Shakespeare has set in motion Olivia's passion, which is to result in her ultimate exposure and which will be all the funnier for the delay, he diverts the focus by manipulating the comic pointer into a series of intrigues by which to expose the surrounding characters. Throughout the third act, for each of these characters the trap is set which is to be sprung in Act IV as Sebastian replaces Viola upon the scene. In Scene ii, for instance, Aguecheek is goaded into challenging Cesario to a duel. Toby and Fabian persuade the fop that Olivia really loves him and that she is feigning interest in Cesario to test the mettle of his manliness. The ridiculous challenge is subsequently forced upon the distraught Viola, who declares she “will return again into the house and desire some conduct of the lady. I am no fighter. … I am one that had rather go with sir priest than sir knight” (III, iv, 264-265, 298-299). Viola, of course, realizes the danger of her disguise—which Shakespeare has no intention of destroying before the full range of exposure is effected. Aguecheek, on the other hand, senses in her reaction an even greater coward than himself, and in Act IV flagrantly pursues the challenge. Andrew, too, Shakespeare has prepared for the appearance of Sebastian! In Scene iii, the dramatist also primes Antonio for his moment of self-knowledge. Pouring forth his friendship in hyperbolic terms and risking his life through his presence in the city, Antonio insists that his friend accept his purse for what needs might arise and meet him an hour later at the Elephant.

Thus, at the end of Act III, each character has exploited his character facade to its height. And, even though the twins are meaningfully integrated into the plot in their own right, their sudden reversal in Act IV presents the comic shock which will transform each of the characters and will reveal their true identity. Aguecheek, for instance, rushes upon “Cesario” to “cuff him soundly,” but the tables are turned as Sir Andrew moans, “We took him for a coward, but he's the very devil incarnate” (V, i, 183). Similarly, Sir Toby, intent upon fostering the mock combat but equally intent upon preventing either party from actually drawing a sword, now finds “Cesario's” wrath quite unmalleable and consequently gets his head bloodied for his mischievous connivances. So also, Olivia suddenly finds “Cesario” amazingly susceptible to her charms and rushes the docile youth off to a priest. Meanwhile, lest any spectator be confused and the ironic humor lessened, Sebastian—clearly functioning as Shakespeare's comic pointer—explains in soliloquy his confusion at Olivia's behavior and his inability to locate his friend Antonio at the Elephant:

Yet doth this accident and flood of fortune
So far exceed all instance, all discourse,
That I am ready to distrust mine eyes
And wrangle with my reason. …

(IV, iii, 11-14)

And, in turn, Olivia's hypocrisy in coveting the affection of Cesario despite her original pose provokes the sudden transformation of Orsino in which he denounces her haughty disdain and snatches Viola to his heart, a heart which only a few moments earlier was abjectly prostrated before his self-constructed altar of undying love for the countess.

Shakespeare's comic device, apparent to the spectators since the second scene in the play, is fully revealed to the characters of the plot in the final scene as a capstone to the character revelations:

One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons,
A natural perspective, that is and is not!
.....An apple, cleft in two, is not more twin
Than these two creatures.

(V, i, 223-224, 230-231)

The close integration of the subplot reveals further the careful construction of the plot of Twelfth Night. Malvolio's puritanical posture as the zealous moralist and the flagrant exposure of his hypocrisy by Feste and Maria reinforce both the theme of character revelation and the tone of tolerant mockery. The group of Maria, Feste,¹⁷ Toby, and Fabian, planting deceptive information and observing from the side as Malvolio is duped into rejecting his original pose, suggest the group of spectators as they too—cognizant of the deceptive twins which the author has planted in the main plot—look on as the major characters are run through similar paces. Thematically, Malvolio is a third suitor for Olivia in Acts II and III, his presumptuous wooing occurring as a corollary to Olivia's ridiculous pursuit of Viola-Cesario. Structurally, Shakespeare utilizes the gulling and exposure of Malvolio (II, iv; III, iv) as a prelude to the major character revelations in Act IV.

Malvolio sets himself in enmity with Feste in his first appearance on stage. As he gripes about the clown's foolishness, Feste quips:

God send you, sir, a speedy infirmity, for the better increasing your folly! Sir Toby will be sworn that I am no fox, but he will not pass his word for twopence that you are no fool.

(I, v, 83-86)

More specifically, Maria brands Malvolio “a kind of Puritan”:

… [A] time-pleaser; an affection'd ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths; the best persuaded of himself, so cramm'd, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him; and on that vice in him will my revenge find notable cause to work.

(II, iii, 160-166)

She then carefully describes, both to inform her cohorts and to establish the comic irony for the spectators, the device by which she will drop a forged love-note in his way. And two scenes later she directs Toby, Andrew, and Fabian to get “into the box-tree: Malvolio's coming down this wall” (II, iv, 18-19). Throughout the scene the pompous and gullible Malvolio is taken in completely—while his prepared audiences in the galleries and on the stage delight in watching his vaunted sobriety and conservative manner sacrificed for the opportunity of social and financial gain. Similarly, as he parades himself before Olivia in ridiculous attire and later as he is accused by Feste-Sir Topas of being a puritan possessed of the devil, Feste and Maria deliver a steady volley of comments designed to focus the spectator's attention on the humor arising from Malvolio's hypocrisy, an inversion of values so drastic that, as Fabian remarks, “If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction” (III, iv, 140-141).

Malvolio's role, then, forms the subplot of the play; it has no direct narrative connection with the primary comic device of Viola-Sebastian.¹⁸ Once Maria and Feste have goaded him into exposure through his wooing Olivia, he is conveniently removed to the dark room as the action of the major plot resumes. And he returns to the stage only after the full range of character revelations has occurred. His presence in Act V is not insignificant, however, because it enables Shakespeare to maintain a comic tone. It may be true that Malvolio's refusal to take his ignominy in the spirit of a joke and his determination to “be revenged on the whole pack” forfeits any opportunity for our ultimate sympathy, but his action also maintains the comic perspective of the play. Through restoring a character to his true nature, the comic catharsis achieves a harmonious social relationship: Orsino weds Viola, Olivia weds Sebastian, Toby weds Maria, Sebastian's friendship with Antonio is restored, Sir Andrew accepts his cowardice. Malvolio's singular unwillingness to learn through laughter provides the spectator a final chuckle at one who remains a comic butt. And, for that matter, his action is not exceptional to the theme of the play. He has, like the others, been forced to face the revelation of his true personality, and in his case the revelation is not an idyllic one.

As described at the outset, character revelation does not involve actual transformation. While the characterization is indeed more complex than the mere manipulation of the Antipholuses and the Dromios of The Comedy of Errors, there is no innate alteration of personality such as is to be depicted in Leontes of The Winter's Tale and in Antonio, Sebastian, and Alonso of The Tempest. In Twelfth Night the character is identical at the beginning and at the conclusion.¹⁹ In Illyria no crimes have been committed; nothing needs to be forgiven. The characters, motivated at best by a cultivated social dilettantism and at worst by an obsession for social status and wealth, make asses of themselves as a result of their failure to use common—not moral—sense. But the characters know themselves more fully at the end of their experiences. They have faced the therapy of exposure, have been laughed from their abnormal postures, and, we assume, have every reason to expect a richer and more productive life as a consequence of their self-knowledge. With Feste, they might all say: “By my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself” (V, i, 21-22).

Shakespeare in his subsequent plays will move toward a deeper comic vision involving a society in which evil is a reality and in which characters are spiritually transformed through the quality of love's forgiveness. His continued efforts in these comedies to establish an effective perspective—with varying degrees of success—will reveal his persistent concern for comic control over a narrative replete with potential tragedy. But Twelfth Night has no potential tragedy; it is among Shakespeare's most successful realizations of “romantic” comedy based on character revelation. And clearly this success results in a large measure from the effective comic perspective—the creation of characters who, while playing a significant narrative role, also serve as comic pointers by providing vital information for the spectator and by functioning as the primary device for character exposure.

Notes

1. Northrop Frye, in “Characterization in Shakespeare's Comedy,” SQ [Shakespeare Quarterly], IV (1953), 271-77, points out that character depends upon function, function in turn upon structure, and structure in turn upon the category of the play. See also his A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance (New York, 1965), p. 14.

2. “The Argument of Comedy,” English Institute Essays, 1948 (New York, 1949), p. 70. Such characters are “people who are in some kind of mental bondage, who are helplessly driven by ruling passions, neurotic compulsions, social rituals and selfishness. The miser, the hypochondriac, the hypocrite, the pedant, the snob: these are humours; people who do not fully know what they are doing, who are slaves to a predictable self-imposed pattern of behavior.”

3. Robert G. Hunter, in a recent study (Shakespeare and the Comedy of Forgiveness [New York, 1965]), has described the form of these comedies as a secularized pattern of the medieval morality involving sin, contrition, and forgiveness.

4. Concerning the late comedies, Joseph Summers expressed something of this general idea in his comment that “after Twelfth Night the so-called comedies require for their happy resolution more radical characters and devices—omniscient and omnipresent dukes, magic, and resurrection. More obvious miracles are needed for comedy to exist in a world in which evil also exists, not merely incipiently but with power” (“The Masks of Twelfth Night,” The University of Kansas City Review, XXII [1955], 32).

5. Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida, currently described as “dark” or “problem comedies,” have always frustrated the critic. In them Shakespeare is searching for a method of comic control sufficient to contain characters developed on the level of faith. In Measure for Measure, for example, Duke Vincentio, as a deus ex machina figure of ambiguous motivation and limited control, fails to provide a satisfactory comic perspective for a stage-world in which evil is so pervasive.

6. “With the writing of Twelfth Night Shakespeare reached perhaps his highest achievement in sheer comedy” (Louis B. Wright, ed., Twelfth Night [New York, 1960], p. vii). Such statements concerning this play are commonplace in Shakespearean criticism. Both the dramatist and his characters appear at ease (C. Bathurst, Differences of Shakespeare's Versification [London, 1857], p. 89) in this “most perfect of his comedies” in which Shakespeare has “set himself the task to show, within the limit of one treatment, like a recapitulation, every combination of comedies in one single comedy” (F. Kreyssig, Vorlesungen über Shakespeare [Berlin, 1862], III, 268). J. O. Halliwell-Phillips describes the work as “the most perfect composition of the kind in the English or in any other language” (Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare [Brighton, 1882], p. 247).

7. Viola's importance in the plot has been frequently described. Bertrand Evans, for instance, comments that in Twelfth Night “the spirit of the practiser prevails. Seven of the principal persons are active practisers, and they operate six devices. All action turns on these, and the effects of the play arise from exploitation of the gaps they open.” Of these devices, “Viola's is truly a practice on the whole world of Illyria” (Shakespeare's Comedies [Oxford, 1960], pp. 118, 120). John Russell Brown, who explains the theme of the play as “love's truth,” sees Viola and her disguise as central to the development of the action (Shakespeare and His Comedies [London, 1957], p. 168). H. B. Charlton calls her “the peculiar embodiment in personality of those traits of human nature which render human beings most loveable, most loving, and most serviceable to the general good” (Shakespearian Comedy [London, 1938], p. 288). Viola “represents a genuineness of feeling against which the illusory can be measured” (Harold Jenkins, “Shakespeare's Twelfth Night,” Rice Institute Pamphlet, XLV [1959], 30). In effect, she “teaches others the true meaning of love” (Porter Williams, “Mistakes in Twelfth Night and Their Resolution,” PMLA, LXXVI [1961], 197). She, since Orsino will marry her and Olivia will marry Sebastian, is allegorically the spirit of love, which functions to redeem the disordered society (William B. Bache, “Levels of Perception in Twelfth Night,” Ball State Teachers College Forum, V [1964], 56). To the contrary, Clifford Leech recently described her importance to the plot “exaggerated by the critic”; she is by no means “a reformer of the Illyrian emotional condition” (“Twelfth Night” and Shakespearean Comedy [Toronto, 1965], p. 36).

8. “In Twelfth Night, affectation is everywhere—among the heroic as among the foolish, among the central characters as among the marginal. … Olivia cannot bear to be known for what she is—a healthy and nubile woman; Viola cannot permit herself to be known for what she is, a girl; Orsino cannot bear to be known for what he is—a lover in love with the idea of love; Sir Toby cannot bear to be known for a parasite, Sir Andrew for a fool, Malvolio for a steward” (G. K. Hunter, Shakespeare: The Late Comedies [London, 1962], p. 36). Jenkins (p. 21) describes the action as “the education of a man or woman,” a plot fundamental to comedy. The characters, wearing psychological masks (Williams, p. 193), are “caught up by delusions or misapprehensions which take them out of themselves, bringing out what they would keep hidden or did not know was there” (C. L. Barber, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy [Princeton, 1959], p. 242).

9. All citations to Shakespeare's text are from The Complete Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, ed. W. A. Neilson and C. H. Hill (Cambridge, 1942).

10. We are later told by Sir Toby that Olivia will not “match above her … years” (I, iii, 115-16).

11. Irving Ribner has suggested that Shakespeare's critical attitude toward the affectations of Petrarchan love was influenced by Barnabe Riche's puritanical attack on the convention in “Apolonius and Silla.” Ed., Twelfth Night, The Kittredge Shakespeares (Waltham, Mass., 1966), pp. xv-xvi.

12. If Aguecheek is intelligent enough to boast of his prowess in pressing a duel with one whom he assumes to be a coward and then to recoil in terror when his adversary appears to have a backbone, he is intelligent enough to be the object of satiric humor since he can learn something from his comic experience. Any assumption that, in this aspect of his character, he is not the proper prey of a satirist—and the charge is as old as the editorial commentary of Samuel Johnson—is surely missing the point.

13. Esquire of Worden, steward until 1594 to Lord Fernando Strange, Earl of Derby and patron of Shakespeare's company (Alwin Thaler, “The Original Malvolio,” The Shakespeare Association Bulletin, VII [1932], 57).

14. Queen Elizabeth's chief steward and Squire of the Presence (Israel Gollancz, A Book of Homage to Shakespeare [London, 1953], pp. 177-78).

15. The Comptroller of the Royal Household, first suggested by E. K. Chambers (Shakespeare: A Survey [London, 1925], p. 178) and extensively supported by Leslie Hotson (“The First Night of Twelfth Night” [London, 1955], pp. 93-118).

16. Malvolio has been of particular interest to commentators on the play. He has been described as Shakespeare's grand attack upon Puritanism (Joseph Hunter, New Illustrations of Shakespeare [London, 1845], I, 381), as a Philistine (William Archer, “Twelfth Night,” Macmillan's Magazine [August, 1884], p. 275), as “an excellent specimen of the sentimental fool, … the fool-part of masculine vanity exposed” (Henry Giles, Human Life in Shakespeare [Boston, 1868], p. 177), as “a spoil-sport, a fussy, pompous upper servant” (David Cecil, “Malvolio, Sir Andrew, and Feste,” The Fine Art of Reading, ed. R. M. Ritchie and R. A. James [London, 1957], p. 52), as an illustration of “overstretched morality” (Charles Lamb, “On Some of the Old Actors,” The Essays of Elia, ed. Saxe Commins [New York, 1935], p. 119), as a narcissist suffering from an inferiority complex (Norman N. Holland, Psychoanalysis and Shakespeare [New York, 1964], p. 278; Theodore Reik, The Need To Be Loved [New York, 1963], pp. 53-54), as a reflection of the large number of malcontents in London in the early seventeenth century, unemployed university-trained men (L. C. Knights, Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson [Manchester, 1936], pp. 315-32). M. Seiden (“Malvolio Reconsidered,” The University of Kansas City Review, XXVIII [1961], 105-14) finds the steward a form of scapegoat who undergoes sacrificial comic death so that comedy itself may live.

17. Francis Fergusson says that Feste, “keep[ing] his sanity better than any of the other characters” and “mov[ing] through the play like a modern master of ceremonies, commenting on the characters with elaborate mockery,” seems to represent Shakespeare himself (“Introduction to Twelfth Night,” Shakespeare's Comedies of Romance [New York, 1963], p. 304). As a ringleader (Enid Welsford, The Fool [London, 1935], p. 253) who remains outside the action with telling remarks (John Hollander, “Twelfth Night and the Morality of Indulgence,” The Sewanee Review, LXVII [1959], 226), Feste plays a “role as observer [which] is analogous to Viola's role as ‘actor’” (Summers, p. 27). “If the Fool be cleverly played, it can be a guide through the most important points of this comedy” (G. G. Gervinus, Shakespeare [Leipzig, 1862], p. 438). “Twelfth Night is Feste's night. … It is [his] function in both parts of the action to make plain to the audience the artificial, foolish attitudes of the principal figures” (Alan S. Downer, “Feste's Night,” College English, XIII [1951-52], 261, 264).

18. Certainly the role of Malvolio is a dramatic highlight of the play. In fact, a court performance of February 2, 1623, is recorded as Malvolio. Nevertheless, I cannot agree with those critics who would make him the central figure in the play. See, for example, Milton Crane, “Twelfth Night and Shakespearean Comedy,” Shakespeare Quarterly, VI (1955), 4. Cf. also Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (New York, 1939), p. 169: “The center is Malvolio. The drama is between his mind and the music of old manners.” Morris P. Tilley (“The Organic Unity of Twelfth Night,” PMLA, XXIX [1914], 554-556) sees Malvolio and the forces to whom he is opposed as reflective of the parting of the ways of the Renaissance and the Reformation in England. “Shakespeare composed Twelfth Night in praise of the much-needed, well-balanced nature, to extoll that happy union of judgment and of feeling which is the basis of a higher sanity.” With greater restraint, H. C. Goddard speaks of Twelfth Night as—in retrospect—Shakespeare's “farewell to comedy. … It marks the end of Merry England, of the day of the great Tudor houses where hospitality and entertainment were so long dispersed. … It seems like an imitation of the Puritan revolution with its rebuke to revelry” (The Meaning of Shakespeare [Chicago, 1951], I, 295).

19. It is impossible to conclude within the context of the drama, for instance, that Viola is “Shakespeare's ideal of the patient idolatry and devoted, silent self-sacrifice of perfect love” (W. Winter, Shadows of the Stage [New York, 1895], III, 24) or that Orsino is a man of “deep sentiments of the most sacred tenderness and truth” displaying a “firm constancy in his love” (Gervinus, p. 429). And it borders on the ridiculous to describe Orsino as one doting on Olivia as a mother substitute because he suffers from a mother fixation and Olivia as frigid, sexually terrified of men in positions of power (W. I. D. Scott, Shakespeare's Melancholics [London, 1962], pp. 57-60; Holland, pp. 278-79).