Madness In Twelfth Night

~ William Mendez

In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, there is a running theme of disorder all based around the celebration of the twelfth day of Christmas, where in Shakespeare’s time, everyone was free to do what they wished. These celebrations often consisted of men crossing dressing and vice versa, women dressing as men. In the play, we have this same characteristic of the twelfth night celebration represented in the character of Viola, who, to get closer to the Duke Orsino, disguises herself as a male eunuch, in order to account for her high pitched voice characteristic of the female sex. All the while, the overarching plot being that the duke loves the lady Olivia who’s brother has just perished at sea (or so she thinks). There are many sub plots ocurring in this play and one of them in particular, having to do with a steward of Olivia named Malvolio. Malvolio, whose dour spirit is ruining everyone’s fun, especially Sir Toby’s whose goal is to see his friend Sir Andrew, married off to his niece Olivia. Maria, the maid of Olivia’s house devises a plan to get rid of Malvolio’s negativity, which is representative of a kind of order among all the chaos in this play.

The characters of Malvolio and Feste the clown are exact opposites of each other and work to create a dichotomy of madness and sanity that is very intriguing to look into. What Shakespeare implies about madness in these two characters speaks volumes not just about madness but about the art that is poetry and fiction. Eventually, through the plotting of the characters Maria, Fabian, and Sir Toby, they efectively paint Malvolio as possessed by the devil after he confesses his love to Olivia based on a false letter that she never wrote. They lock Malvolio in a dark room and dress Feste the clown in the garb of a fictional clergyman named Sir Topas. The two have a very lengthy conversation where Feste tries to prove to Malvolio that he is mad or possessed. Malvolio begins to actually believe this lie that has been put in place by Maria and Sir Toby. The entierty of this scene deals with the concept of the imagination and one’s own ability to create something out of nothing, much like the question posed by Theseus of the lunatic, the lover and the poet in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: 

“More strange than true. I never may believe
These antique fables nor these fairy toys.
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends” (Act V Scene I Lines 2-6).
With these lines Theseus is making a connection between the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, saying that they all place their individual subjectivity on things that may necessarily have a contradictory meaning, or no meaning at all. For example, in theatre and in fiction, the poet/playwright creates an entire setting out of basically nothing. These aritsts make the audience or reader feel a strong overwhelming emotion and attachment to the story, almost as if it is real. The lunatic, insists he sees demons and monsters that aren’t there, the lover can love a person even if that person is unattractive in the eyes of someone else, and the playwright can create worlds out of simple language disguising itself as microcosms and complex plots. It is as if to say that the madman and the sane poet are one and the same that madness and art go hand in hand, because the artist creates something out of nothing just as the lunatic does. Take Feste’s lines in this scene with Malvolio locked away: “Why it hath bay windows transparent as barricadoes and the clerestories toward the south north are as lustrous as ebony. And yet complainest thou of obstruction?” (Act IV Scence II Lines 34-36). These lines by Feste indicate him trying to trick Malvolio into thinking he is possessed, with the use of disguise and the creation of something that isn’t there, we can see that the madman is no different than the artist as they can see whole worlds and demons like the madman.

2 thoughts on “Madness In Twelfth Night”

  1. I really enjoyed your connection to the theme of the lunatic, lover and the poet. This theme we talked a lot about in class but didn’t really seem to compare to more than one aspect of the play. By breaking it apart to several parts of the play. For example, when you say the lunatic and the lover can both see things that aren’t there it really shows just how similar they are and why this theme is cohesive with more than one person. While the lunatic can see demons or things that aren’t there, the lover can see beauty even in someone that most people don’t see anything in. Which is a type of madman. You’re not seeing reality. In the case of the poet, they make people feel things that aren’t real as they watch something that is far from anything in reality. I really enjoyed this analysis.

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  2. After all the class discussion on this topic, I agree that madness and art do go hand in hand. The art of the play is based on dramatics and the drama comes from the madness that occurs within the plot. It keeps the audience entertained and is the main contributor to a play’s success; it is evident within every Shakespeare play. I also really enjoyed you bringing the playwright into the equation. You spoke of lunatics, lovers, and the writer himself. Essentially, I think the playwright plays the biggest role of all; he decides whether the reader identifies a character as mad or not. We see this especially with Malvolio. As readers, we saw how he was tricked and, while he is naïve, we can clearly see he is not crazy. But, ultimately there is fine line between whether a character is sane or not. It seems as though, for a character to be sane, everyone has to believe them and vice versa. If nobody believes the character, they are dubbed possessed and “in need of an exorcism.” I think Malvolio’s role within the play was to illustrate how subjective sanity and madness really are.

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