Malvolio is an upper-echelon servant to Olivia. He loves Olivia, but even more he loves himself and the idea of himself married to a big-shot. So, some of the clan around Sir Toby Belch drop an ambiguous letter in his path. It looks like Olivia's handwriting and says that she loves him and gives him instructions to dress and act certain crazy ways, without ever mentioning Olivia's or Malvolio's name.
He seizes on it and starts acting crazy. Now, eventually, Malvolio gets locked in a dark room and acts a little bit crazy, maybe he's going a little crazy for real. But at the beginning, he was the most sane, if officious, in this whole crazy bunch, except for Feste the Fool.
While everyone in this play acts crazy, and many of them even act with real cruelty, why is Malvolio, who is rude but a pretty easy foil, the only one who really suffers? I have this idea that it might be tied to him taking himself and his romantic aspirations pretty seriously, but I'm not sure that really works. At the end of the play it's revealed that his whole imprisonment was a hoax and he is set free. This take place in a scene in which Viola changes into a man and becomes betrothed to Orsino, who was about to kill her, Sebastian (Viola's brohter) is revealed to have married Olivia with the lady under the impression that he was his cross-dressing sister, and "Sir" Toby Belch has married Viola's servant Maria.
Malvolio responds to this by yelling "I will be revenged on you all!" and running off stage, not to be seen again. To me, that's a perfectly sensible response, though it'd make even more sense to bust out some R. Kelly "Alla yo ass is crazy" and be gone from madhouse Illyria for good.
Well, that concludes Twelfth Night. Today I started Troilus and Cressida. As usual, a play I loved went by too fast. T & C may take longer, as I don't know it as well and I do have some actual work to do this weekend.
Ah yes, and the Sonnets are going well. Let me summarize the first 20: Young man, you're beautiful, please get married and have kids.
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