“Malvolio is a Peg-A-Ramsey.”
Rehearsals start next week for a staged reading of Twelfth Night for Western Gold Theatre, and I’ve been performing some research tasks prior to their start. With only a week before our opening to investigate our characters, I wanted to be able to start with a definitive characterization, or at least a skeleton on which to add the Director’s notes as they come up. I haven’t had to play too many well-known characters so of course I want to be able to bring something of my own to the character, even though I’ll be reading the lines. But where to start?
It’s easy to simply look at Malvolio as one of those Shakespeare villains that are purely unhappy when everyone else is having a good time. There are enough of these characters throughout the Canon, but by trying to find some historical details, and slanting my performance toward some points that the script highlights, I hope to show Malvolio as a real person, and that his demeanor has been shaped by his experiences that results in his actions and beliefs.
Reading the play for the first time in years, and watching some scenes online, I tried to answer the question: “Why is he so against all of the revelry?” A small memory came to mind of an authority figure from my past that appeared to share that same seriousness. While I had the same idea of him from a distance that the rest of Olivia’s household do of Malvolio; namely someone that didn’t know how to have fun and whose entire existence was based on his job and position. However, I discovered that this person was all for some fun, but not when it crossed the line into insubordination, created dangerous situations and put others into danger. Considering how out of control the jokes and pranks become at Olivia’s House, we can make the same argument of the Steward’s view of his position. If he doesn’t lay the law down, who else is going to? Additionally, Malvolio’s position is overly important to him, which makes him appear very self-aggrandizing. Perhaps to the detriment of his life, but he may have come from a much lower status, and is proud of his current station in life (while hoping for more, as his monologue shows.). If he allowed everyone to get away with everything the way they want to, he would be blamed for it and would risk losing that position.
Toby also describes him as a Puritan. Is this meant to be taken literally, as a religious description, or something else: A spoilsport, perhaps? After all, there aren’t too many overly-religious statements made by the character. If he is a Puritan, what would that mean to Shakespeare’s audiences? While his plays were performed at the end of a terrifyingly violent period for religion, the closest I could come to that was someone that bends the rules in order to prove a point. We all know people like this, but it doesn’t make them bad people. While I’m thinking of dressing him in Black as is usual for the character, I am trying to make him bleak, rather than dark. There are some experiences in his past that make him hate what alcohol does to a person, so he is – in his mind – trying to help people, not thinking less of them.
So, here is the beginning of my Malvolio: A serious person who knows from experience what can go wrong if discipline is allowed to slip – especially where alcohol is involved: Someone who has worked too hard to get where he is today, and doesn’t want to lose it all by being too ‘soft’ on people. When these ‘people’ are nothing but hangers-on to Olivia, who is beset by an all-consuming melancholy following the death if her Brother. He cares for herm too, and doesn’t want anyone to take advantage of her. Of course, he’s also a ‘Peg-A-Ramsey’ which, I have found out, is a Nursery Rhyme character close to Little Bo Peep. What has he lost? In the Cross-Gartered stockings scene – his self-respect!
All of these points illustrate a real person with real problems who is so busy trying to stop the practical jokes being played on people around him, he doesn’t recognize the joke being played on him. The following scenes both in the dungeon and after his release, show a truly scared man that doesn’t understand why these things are happening. He is weighed down by his own expectations and desires, not unhappy, but a little sad: Someone who is being led into an experience that will change his life. There are times to stretch the characterization, of course, but I would like to see him as a real person.
