"Grace, laughter, and discourse may meet,
And yet the beauty not go less;
For what is noble should be sweet."
If the characters of this play are generally less interesting in themselves than some we meet with elsewhere in the Poet's works, the defect is pretty well made up by the felicitous grouping of them. Their very diversities of temper and purpose are made to act as so many mutual affinities; and this too in a manner so spontaneous that we see not how they could possibly act otherwise. For broad comic effect, the cluster of which Sir Toby is the centre—all of them drawn in clear yet delicate colours—is inferior only to the unparalleled assemblage that makes rich the air of Eastcheap. Of Sir Toby himself—that most whimsical, madcap, frolicsome old toper, so full of antics and fond of sprees, with a plentiful stock of wit, which is kept in motion by an equally plentiful lack of money—it is enough to say, with our Mr. Verplanck, that "he certainly comes out of the same associations where the Poet saw Falstaff hold his revels"; and that, though "not Sir John, nor a fainter sketch of him, yet he has an odd sort of a family likeness to him." Sir Toby has a decided penchant for practical jokes; though rather because he takes a sort of disinterested pleasure in them, than because he loves to see himself in the process of engineering them through: for he has not a particle of ill-nature in him. Though by no means a coward himself, he nevertheless enjoys the exposure of cowardice in others; yet this again is not so much because such exposure feeds his self-esteem, as because he delights in the game for its own sake, and for the nimble pastime it yields to his faculties: that is, his impulses seem to rest in it as an ultimate object, or a part of what is to him the summum bonum of life. And it is much the same with his addiction to vinous revelry, and to the moister kind of minstrelsy; an addiction that proceeds in part from his keen gust of fun, and the happiness he finds in making sport for others as well as for himself: he will drink till the world turns round, but not unless others are at hand to enjoy the turning along with him.
Sir Andrew Aguecheek, the aspiring, lackadaisical, self-satisfied echo and sequel of Sir Toby, fitly serves the double purpose of a butt and a foil to the latter, at once drawing him out and setting him off. Ludicrously proud of the most petty, childish irregularities, which, however, his natural fatuity keeps him from acting, and barely suffers him to affect, on this point he reminds us of that impressive imbecility, Abraham Slender; yet not in such sort as to encroach at all on Slender's province. There can scarcely be found a richer piece of diversion than Sir Toby's practice in dandling Sir Andrew out of his money, and paying him off with the odd hope of gaining Olivia's hand. And the funniest of it is, that while Sir Toby understands him thoroughly he has not himself the slightest suspicion or inkling of what he is; he being as confident of his own wit as others are of his want of it. Nor are we here touched with any revulsions of moral feeling, such as might disturb our enjoyment of their fellowship; on the contrary, we sympathize with Sir Toby's sport, without any reluctances of virtue or conscience. To our sense of the matter, he neither has nor ought to have any scruples or compunctions about the game he is hunting. For, in truth, his dealing with Sir Andrew is all in the way of fair exchange. He gives as much pleasure as he gets. If he is cheating Sir Andrew out of his money, he is also cheating him into the proper felicity of his nature, and thus paying him with the equivalent best suited to his capacity. It suffices that, in being stuffed with the preposterous delusion about Olivia, Sir Andrew is rendered supremely happy at the time; while he manifestly has not force enough to remember it with any twinges of shame or self-reproach. And we feel that, while clawing his fatuous crotchets and playing out his absurdities, Sir Toby is really doing Sir Andrew no wrong, since the latter is then most himself, is in his happiest mood, and in the most natural freedom of his indigenous gifts and graces. All which quite precludes any division of our sympathies, and just makes our comic enjoyment of their intercourse simply perfect.
Malvolio, the self-love-sick Steward, has hardly had justice done him, his bad qualities being indeed of just the kind to defeat the recognition of his good ones. He represents a perpetual class of people, whose leading characteristic is moral demonstrativeness, and who are never satisfied with a law that leaves them free to do right, unless it also give them the power to keep others from doing wrong. To quote again from Mr. Verplanck, Malvolio embodies "a conception as true as it is original and droll; and its truth may still be frequently attested by comparison with real Malvolios, to be found everywhere from humble domestic life up to the high places of learning, of the State, and even of the Church." From the central idea of the character it follows in course that the man has too much conscience to mind his own business, and is too pure to tolerate mirth in others, because too much swollen and stiffened with self-love to be merry himself. His highest exhilaration is when he contemplates the image of his self-imputed virtues: he lives so entranced with the beauty of his own inward parts, that he would fain hold himself the wrong side out, to the end that all the world may duly appreciate and admire him. Naturally, too, the more he hangs over his own moral beauty, the more pharisaical and sanctimonious he becomes in his opinion and treatment of others. For the glass which magnifies to his view whatever of good there may be in himself, also serves him as an inverted telescope to minify the good of those about him; and, which is more, the self-same spirit that prompts him to invert the instrument upon other men's virtues, naturally moves him to turn the big end upon their faults and the small end upon his own. Of course, therefore, he is never without food for censure and reproof save when he is alone with himself, where, to be sure, his intense consciousness of virtue just breathes around him "the air of Paradise." Thus his continual frothing over with righteous indignation all proceeds from the yeast of pride and self-importance working mightily within him. Maria, whose keen eye and sure tongue seldom fail to hit the white of the mark, describes him as not being "any thing constantly, but a time-pleaser." And it is remarkable that the emphasized moral rigidity of such men is commonly but the outside of a mind secretly intent on the service of the time, and caring little for any thing but to trim its sails to the winds of self-interest and self-advancement. Yet Malvolio is really a man of no little talent and accomplishment, as he is also one of marked skill, fidelity, and rectitude in his calling; so that he would be a right worthy person all round, but for his inordinate craving
"to be dress'd in an opinion
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit;
As who should say, I am Sir Oracle,
And when I ope my lips, let no dog bark."
This overweening moral coxcombry is not indeed to be reckoned among the worst of crimes; but perhaps there is no other one fault so generally or so justly offensive, and therefore none so apt to provoke the merciless retaliations of mockery and practical wit.
Maria, the little structure packed so close with mental spicery, has read Malvolio through and through; she knows him without and within; and she never speaks of him, but that her speech touches the very pith of the theme; as when she describes him to be one "that cons State without book, and utters it by great swaths; the best-persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellences, that it is his ground of faith that all who look on him love him." Her quaint stratagem of the letter has and is meant to have the effect of disclosing to others what her keener insight has long since discovered; and its working lifts her into a model of arch, roguish mischievousness, with wit to plan and art to execute whatsoever falls within the scope of such a character. Her native sagacity has taught her how to touch him in just the right spots to bring out the reserved or latent notes of his character. Her diagnosis of his inward state is indeed perfect; and when she makes the letter instruct him,—"Be opposite with a kinsman, surly with servants; let thy tongue tang arguments of State; put thyself into the trick of singularity,"—her arrows are so aimed as to cleave the pin of his most characteristic predispositions.