Malvolio in Twelfth Night
A Character Study of the Hypocritical Steward
Malvolio, played by Nigel Hawthorne in the Trevor Nunn film of Twelfth Night, is brought down by his own hypocrisy and weakness.
Malvolio, Lady Olivia’s steward, is at the centre of the subplot of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. During the carousing in Act II, Scene 3, Malvolio appears to remonstrate with Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew, Feste and Maria, demanding “My master, are you mad?..Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house...?” He confronts Sir Toby in particular, telling him that “My lady bade me tell you that, though she harbours you as her kinsman, she is nothing allied to your disorders” and that if he does not improve his behaviour “she is very willing to bid you farewell.” Sir Toby’s response is to break out into a popular song: “Farewell, dear heart, since I must needs be gone.” (This scene is brilliantly played in Trevor Nunn’s film version of Twelfth Night, with Nigel Hawthorne as Malvolio and Mel Smith as Sir Toby Belch.)
Since the audience has not witnessed any conversation between Olivia and Malvolio, we cannot tell whether this is an accurate version of her attitude to her cousin. However, it does show Malvolio’s love of using borrowed power, as when he threatens Maria in the same scene that he will tell Olivia she provided the men with wine: “she shall know of it, by this hand.” Indeed, this tendency to domineer over social inferiors has led him to dismiss Feste earlier in the play: “I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal.” (I.5.) These words will come back to haunt him in the play’s last scene.
Malvolio is more than just a killjoy, however. His real flaw, and his downfall, is that he is also a hypocrite. As we discover during the scene in Olivia’s garden, Malvolio fantasizes about marrying Olivia, and tells himself that similar things have happened before “there is example for’t”. Without this weakness, what Maria calls “his grounds of faith that all who look on him love him” (II.3), he would not be so easily made a fool of.
This hypocrisy can be brought out in various ways in production: the Trevor Nunn film has Nigel Hawthorne hearing the noise in II.3 whilst reading his bedroom. In contrast to his austere appearane in previous sequences, he is wearing a silk dressing gown, drinking a glass of sherry, and reading a racy-looking illustrated paper entitled L’Amour. His furtive hypocritical pleasures contrast unfavourably with the noisy, but honest and communal drinking session going on downstairs.
