So the conflict between Sir Toby and the other less characters, the Portiers and Malvolio is a subplot so normally, but at times it really takes over the play. In fact, we have evidence that in the moment is the most memorable thing about the play was the Malvolio subplot. I wanted just to think a little bit about the nature of the conflict, what gets the going plot going? Think about how Malvolio gets hooked in, how he become susceptible to the practical joke that gets played on him, things really get started. You have to imagine that there's already tension between these characters to begin with, that this isn't coming from nowhere, but we really see this dramatized on stage, Act 2, Scene 3. Toby and Sir Andrew, and Feste are up in the middle of the night in Olivia's house, I guess in the kitchen or wherever and they're drinking and they're singing and even Maria, who's closely allied with these characters says, "Can you guys shut up." Basically, it's like it's the middle of the night, you're going to get in trouble and I don't want that to happen. Maria, Line 80, says there, "For the love of God, peace," and then enters Malvolio. Malvolio comes in in high dudgeon, "My Masters, are you mad? Or what are you? Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night? Do you make an ale-house of my lady's house, that you squeak out your cozier's catches without any mitigation or remorse of voice? Is there no respect of place, persons, nor time in you?" Toby says, "We did keep time, sir, in our catches," and the song we were singing and we keeping time. "Sneck up." Which you can imagine what insult that is. Malvolio continues to lecture Sir Toby, and they go back and forth and continuing disrespecting. Toby later, after a few line says, "Art anymore than a steward?" to Malvolio, "Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?" What's the nature of this conflict that Shakespeare is really putting out there for us to see? I think theatrically, it is important that, for me, I should say, that it's important that Malvolio, he is doing his job. He's first presented as doing his job, when he comes in there. But his aspirations you can already tell that he aspires to be the lord of the house, his appearance already craves order and he does cross the line. He steps over line with Sir Toby who is a knight, and he shouldn't do that in their world, but he does it. He goes right into it, and then it's important theatrically that Sir Toby is cruel. It's a really cruel thing that he says, but almost to the point of physical, to be absolutely humiliating to Malvolio and it starts to get us, the reader, and the audience, prepared to be rooting for Toby, so that the audience is sucker punched, I would say, with the M.O.A.I letter and the seto pass scene of it going way too far, Malvolio. That might be a modern interpretation of this, but I'm not so sure. I don't know. It's very satisfying for the audience and for us to be taken on that ride of being on the side of the people who are playing the pranks on the mustache twirling bad guy Villain, and then suddenly feeling so empathetic towards him when it goes too far. But I think that's key in that scene is that it's got to be cruel, what Toby does. On the surface, the conflict seems to be one of ideas, where you have virtuous behavior versus cakes and ale. You've got the Puritan versus the Hedonist or, two different ways of thinking or two different ways of. Spiritual well-being are pledged to the body. But it gets personal. Yeah. When Malvolio calls out Sir Toby's disordered behavior, specifically his alcoholism in front of everybody. Calling him fat. I must be round with you. Yeah. So Toby is stung because number 1, it's true the behavior, I think, and the threat that he could get kicked out. But interestingly, because we talk about Malvolio is the one who cares about order, but as you said, he's the one who crosses the line in terms of status, and the fact that he's being insulted by a steward bothers Sir Toby. Suddenly, it's Sir Toby saying you're breaking the rules, you're not supposed to talk like that, even though he's the one who's get up all night breaking the rules. That's really interesting. Basically, every system Malvolio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really interested in how Malvolio is just following the advice books of the time, I'm thinking of Castiglione's "The Book of The Courtier," even if you're not high-born, if you can just speak and act and learn how to fence like a courtier, you can rise in this, and one of the things that Maria says about Malvolio, he said, "He's an affection as that cons state without book," that is he says her learned it so well. He can speak without a book in front of him like a courtier, and utters it by great swaths. So Malvolio just learning this incredibly popular book, "The Book of The Courtier. It's like a self help book. Anybody can do this. You just have to work really, really hard and then make it look really easy. Like I've just been like this all my life. So for [inaudible] steward, I'm not sure whose side we're supposed to be on. If we're in the audience, it's like, well, I try to speak better than I was taught when I was a kid also, or I would like to rise a little bit in status. So in terms of how Shakespeare's audiences would have received this. So I've always been curious because as I understand it was the Puritans were really tried to shut the theater down. Yes. Then Shakespeare goes and puts one in his play, or at least we call, he's called appear within. But is he appeared in, I'm curious about was dangerous? Was that an aging move on Shakespeare's part to put up a figure representing the Puritans? Then wipe the four of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just enough to say that Shakespeare is like he's aware of antagonism because his conflicts that are out there in the world that are actually define Elizabethans Society, and he's actually the main plot, Catherine, you were discussing Olivia falling verses area. You're right to point out that Olivia is very careful to say, is this someone of the right status? I can read the signs. Looks pretending to be a servant, but that's no servant, and it's just sort of like that's the, that's the ether that they move now is that awareness of class bounds, and then in the subplot Shakespeare those class structure is there and it's impacting how people live their life, and then it gives us this sub-plot that's about magnifying those antagonisms. Yeah, so when it get back at Malvolio, because he's trying to act high better than he is. The first thing Maria says, well, I know how to write like my lady. So she in fact immediately [inaudible]. That whole dynamic with Malvolio memorizing speeches or practicing speeches is a great segue to Act 2, Scene 5. After Act 2, Scene 3, Malvolio leaves, and Maria has been insulted in the course of this exchange. So basically Malvolio says, "I'm going to tell on you." Maria says, "That fellow is his mistake, that was his mistake." Maria is somebody who is smarter than he is as smart. Maria comes up with this practical joke, which is to trick him with this letter. So Act 2, Scene 5, we see Malvolio walking in the garden, basically practicing speeches. So my question of this scene is, how did they catch Malvolio? I think Tim's already alluded to it, but this scene begins, Andrew and Fabian and Toby are hiding in a box tree. Maria has set up this whole practical joke. It's a little mini play within a play. If you will, Malvolio is wandering in the garden talking to himself to his fortune, all this fortune. Then he says, line 32, "To be Count Malvolio." The part of the humor for the audience, Malvolio doesn't realize that he's not alone, and Toby and Andrew are invading or commenting on what he's saying, and Toby is, "Ah, rogue. Pistol him, pistol him, pistol whip him." That is punish him for, To be Count Malvolio. He goes on. There is example for it. The Lady of the Strachy married the yeoman of the robe. Having been three months married to her, sitting in my state, calling my officers about me in my branched velvet gown, having come from a day bed where I left Olivia sleeping, and then to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard. Telling them I know my place as I would, they should do theirs. To ask for my kinsman, Toby. He imagines dressing Toby down publicly and so forth. So I'm wondering, we're given insight into Malvolio. Malvolio is not exactly giving soliloquy, but it is asking if he is speaking in soliloquy, and we're kind of getting a sense of who this guy is. So how does Maria catch him? What is his will? Well, I wonder about how you all think about the kind of soliloquy. In one way, it's really painful for Malvolio, that he's imagining this thing that we all kind of realize it's not very likely to happen. On the other hand, what a horrible person that he is imagining all of this in a way that is not very likely to happen. That he's kind of inserting himself into a story. It seems to me like that's how she really captures him as by kind of dangling this letter that encourages him to read himself into a story where he maybe isn't necessarily there. So when we get to the section, act 2, scene 5, around line 120 and following. He is looking at MOAI and trying to figure out what that stands for. He goes into the reading practice here. MOAI, M, Malvolio, M, why is that begins my name. So far, so that the letter actually becomes about him. It reminds me, Catherine, of this section that you are talking about, which I actually read the line, in act 2, scene 3, a little differently. Malvolio, cons state without book and utters it by a great swaths. I took that as he's not actually reading, he's actually just spouting out. Yeah. That he's memorized it. Right. Yeah. So now we see what happens when he is actually trying to read and it becomes about him. Then we get to see the Puritan performing. We did. So the Puritan performing and the way that he is reading scripture, and the Puritans will at work here also. Malvolio is being kind of ill-will, and as he goes on the language of, well, I think it's really pronounced when he starts to say, I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-devise the very man. I will do all of these things. Such force. Barely repressed aggression might be one way to play Malvolio that from the beginning he's just sieving. Bubbled up. Yeah. Yeah. Publicly shouting about jumping over class barriers. When he's talking about reading the letter and those letters in the letter M.O.A.I. The simulation is not as the former and yet to crush this a little, it would bow to me for every one of these letters are in my name. So to talk about interpreting as going to get in there and crush this. That's such an odd verb. Unless that's how you think of everything you do. That's great. In a scene earlier in the play at a scene that will actually become decisive for how the plot unfolds, Malvolio gets in a tiff with Feste the clown and Malvolio accuses Feste of just being as a dull witted fool, he's not very good. I saw him put down the other night. Olivia says, "You know people don't like this, you're sick of self-love." Already he's been diagnosed as this kind of narcissist or overly infatuated with himself and it seems like that like you said, Rachel, about his reading practice, it is almost a quasi theological. But he is reading a sense into the text and that sense is he's reading himself into the text. That's a way of talking about or seen as deeply narcissistic. He doesn't care whether or not only there'll a lot saying, it seems to be part of what it means to catch the plague here is just to be completely self-absorbed and to see the world on your own terms. I think Malvolio is the hardest role in the play. It's the biggest role in the play. He's in the most scenes, I think he's got the biggest line load, but it's the most difficult character arc journey that he goes on from beginning to end, more so than any of the other characters in the play. For me right now, at this point in my life with this play, I think he's the most powerful piece of the play for me. The journey of a practical joke gone too far, a life ruined, bullying taken to the point of no return, and what have you created by the end? His last line, is, "I'll be revenged on the whole pack of you." There's 50 different ways to play that line to resonate with the audience. But I don't know. That may feel differently 20 years from now about the play, but right now he is it. Yeah. I think it's a challenging role because he has to pull off both this extreme sobriety and then yeah, this is what Maria tricks into, is to showing up, cross-cut, garnered in yellow stock and so just wildly improbable ridiculous court fashion, smiling and winking, and really playing it up. That's part of the joke is like behind Maria seems to have said, underlying this patina virtue, this cloak of virtue is this person who will do anything for love. The actor, he or she, playing that role needs to have this tremendous gravitas and then be able to play a clown and then very pointedly at the end. But with power. With power. Yeah, because that stops everybody in my tracks. "We wanted to do the double wedding thing." Triple wedding. Yes. Yeah. It's a tricky role. I totally agree. Yeah, and I think because Shakespeare was never going to take the easy way out and be so easy just to make him the cardboard puritan. Yeah, lantern is purity, blah, blah, blah. That's easy. We'll pull his pants down and then kick them off the studios. Yeah. Yeah. They'll be done. But then as Tim said, the practical jokes, the bullying goes past the point of no return and we have changed somebody in the course of the play. We've ruined his life. We've ruined his life. To go back to the second title of the play, What You Will, doesn't work for Malvolio and he will, he will, that's the word he uses over and over again but he has dreams but it's not going to work. But what he won't. Yeah he won't. With Maria, she probably did get what she willed, but she didn't intend those consequences and that she didn't realize her power, her will, that was actually much more destructive than she ever dreamed possible. She just wanted to make fun of the guy.
