4 of Crowns - Malvolio
Dramatis Personae: Malvolio.
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Roman à clef : Christopher Hatton, Lord Chancellor.
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Text & Context: Malvolio is a Puritan. He disapproves of pleasure, especially in others. He is apt to believe his stern and proper ways will be rewarded. The number 4 suggests a square, and Malvolio is a square. The name itself means "ill will", and holds a dark mirror to Viola and Olivia, as well as perhaps the author's Will.
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Elizabethan Twelfth Night celebrations employed a Lord of Misrule - usually a man of lower social status or no-count, here Toby Belch - and a whipping-boy to be butt of the festivity's ridicule - here, Malvolio, the would-be count who counts himself better than others.
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When Maria's trick is played on him, it is his own block-headedness and ambition which contribute to his abuse. The dark he is cast into, which Feste claims is blazoned with light, is emblematic of Malvolio's nature and mind. It is a letter which has dropped him into this pit, and a letter on which he rests his hope of release. A modern spectator will be forgiven for feelings of pity for Malvolio, having no first-hand experience of Puritanism, but Shakespeare makes it clear Malvolio himself would feel no pity and has, when all is said and done, learned nothing. In his last words - "I'll be reveng'd on the whole pack of you" - may be seen the puritan revenge on these happy players half a century later, when the Long Parliament of 1642 closed England's theatres.
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It may be worth noting that at the end of Twelfth Night, one man remains incarcerated, indeed in the custody of Malvolio - Sebastian's shipmate Antonio, whose willingness to put his purse and his person at his friend's disposal suggests a very similar love in another Antonio, the merchant of Venice.
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Subtext: The character Malvolio is a satire on Sir Christopher Hatton, a early rival of the author's for Queen Elizabeth's attentions. Her majesty's nicknames for Hatton, having "danced his way into the Queen's favour in a galliard", were "mutton" and "sheep" This is alluded to numerous times in Twelfth Night, often by Toby, from "I can cut the mutton to't" to "niggardly rascally sheep-biter". Hatton's signature, or posy, was Foelix Infortunatus, which the author had previously mocked in the character of "Master F.I." in his A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres. Here again the unctuous fortune-hunter Hatton is mocked, in the Fortunatus Infoelix signature of Maria's letter.
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Intertext: Staffs 4 Orsino; Queen of Staffs Viola; Crowns 2 Feste; Cups 5 Olivia;
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