MADNESS AND MIMETIC VIOLENCE:
LAUGHTER AND LANGUAGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S TWELFTH NIGHT
By
Kaitlyn Joy Blum
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of
The Wilkes Honors College
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
with a Concentration in English Literature
Wilkes Honors College of
Florida Atlantic University
Jupiter, Florida
May 2013
MADNESS AND MIMETIC VIOLENCE:
LAUGHTER AND LANGUAGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S TWELFTH NIGHT
By
Kaitlyn Joy Blum
This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr.
Michael Harrawood, and has been approved by the members of her/his supervisory
committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in
partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts
and Sciences.
SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:
__________________________
Dr. Michael Harrawood
________________________
Dr. Rachel Corr
________________________
Dean Jeffrey Buller, Wilkes Honors College
________________________
Date
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could never have done this project on my own, and must give many thanks to a
multitude of superb individuals. First, I wish to say thank you to my family: to my
mother, your never-ending support for me has always been my greatest source of
encouragement; my father, for your words of wisdom; my brother Will for our true
friendship with one another; my grandparents, for supporting my academic endeavors;
my godparents for their kindness, especially during my college years. I want to thank the
friends that I have met at the Honors College, especially my best friend Erica for your
constant support and Dawn for your assistance in formatting this thesis. Additionally, I
must thank several outstanding faculty members for being particularly important in my
college career. Thank you to Dr. Rachel Corr, for being my second reader, and inspiring
my interest in the study of anthropology. Thank you to Dr. Carmen Cañete-Quesada for
teaching me Spanish, and believing in my abilities. Next, a big thank you to Dr. Miguel
Vázquez for simultaneously being one of the hardest and most influential teachers I have
had at the Honors College; he taught me Don Quijote, and I must thank him profusely for
that! Finally, I must thank Dr. Michael Harrawood for being the best academic advisor
that a college student could ask for; I consider you to be both my English teacher and my
life mentor, because you have taught me about literature and have been a true friend.
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ABSTRACT
Author:
Kaitlyn Joy Blum
Title:
Madness and Mimetic Violence: Laughter and Language in
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Institution:
Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University
Thesis Advisor:
Dr. Michael Harrawood
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences
Concentration:
English Literature
Year:
2013
This thesis seeks to consider the malevolent humor of Shakespeare’s Twelfth
Night, particularly in light of the philosophical position that literary critic Rene Girard
posits about what he refers to as mimetic desire. Girard contends that much of the basis
of human interaction is the mediation between desires to imitate, and desires to
annihilate. Using Girard’s critical writings as a frame of thought, I am interested in the
circulation of cruelty in which the characters of this problem play interact with one
another. American writer W.H. Auden claimed “Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s
unpleasant plays”, and this thesis addresses the relationship of laughter and cruelty in
Twelfth Night as the characters utilize comedy to negotiate between their simultaneous
desires to imitate and destroy.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE ..................................................................................................................1
CHAPTER TWO ...............................................................................................................18
CHAPTER THREE ...........................................................................................................41
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................................58
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CHAPTER ONE
This paper seeks to consider the malevolent humor of Shakespeare’s Twelfth
Night and the problems present in this problem play. Malevolent humor often relies on an
element of cruelty, typically at another person’s expense. While this category of comedy
can often produce laughter, malevolent humor leaves a sense of aggression and violence
in its wake. Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden described Twelfth Night as “one of
Shakespeare’s unpleasant plays. It is not a comedy for school children”, and I believe that
Auden cuts closer to the essence of the play than those individuals who perceive Twelfth
Night to be a light and entertaining romp.
Although Twelfth Night appears to be
primarily concerned with cross-dressing, identity confusion, and silly tricks, a shroud of
darkness covers the play, as characters attempt to usurp one another and at times
viciously tear one another down. Since the 1950’s, many literary critics have categorized
Twelfth Night to be one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, because it was labeled as a
comedy in the 1623 Folio; yet contemporary opinions highlight the problematic nature of
the play. The play is rife with violence and a cruel sense of humor. This paper argues that
it is because of the presence of violence within Twelfth Night that the play successfully
echoes a concern with the cruelty of laughter. Several moments of the play which seem to
call out to the audience as being “comedy”, are in fact some of the darkest scenes of the
play.
I will analyze the Malvolio-baiting scenes, as they are essential to understand the
core essence of play, because these scenes include the moments in which Feste, Sir Toby
Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria perform an elaborate trick on Malvolio, in an
1
attempt to humiliate the servant, who remains consistently fixated on the morality of
others. These scenes are particularly crucial for understanding the cruelty and violence
that occurs within the play, because Feste, Sir Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and
Maria use Malvolio in order to stage an elaborate trick, in what seems to be (in their
minds) that they are teaching the Puritan a lesson. Additionally, I am interested in the
word-play that Feste the clown performs regularly, in a form of verbal performance and
usurpation, especially when he speaks with Olivia and Viola. Feste operates in an
interesting relationship with the other characters of the play, because his role is to
perform the stereotypical fool, yet in reality, Feste remains the sharpest character onstage.
I will consider Feste’s role in relation to the imitation in which he partakes, especially as
he is self-aware of performing the role of the fool, as he attempts to usurp the speech of
other characters in order to make their words his own in grand imitative gestures and
word play. Feste’s verbal usurpation is a perfect example of mimesis, and he is able to
add comedy through his imitations of various characters. Additionally, this paper will
consider the importance of the presence of the twins Viola and Sebastian, and the final
goal of the play: the placement of both of the twins together on the stage at the same
time. The twins’ presence is so important in considering what I will call the mimetic
element present in Twelfth Night as the crux of the play is the way in which characters
negotiate relationships by imitating one another. Viola and Sebastian are integral for the
mimesis element because twins are human representations of mimesis, because they are
separate individuals yet they appear to be the same, in what seems to be a display of
imitation. Shakespeare is aware of their mimetic nature, and plays it up in several scenes
2
of the play, in which Viola is confused to be Sebastian, and vice versa. Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night operates in a close relationship with mimetic violence as characters imitate
one another in an attempt to enact that which they desire from other characters; the
ultimate way to unlock the meaning and significance of the play is through an
understanding of mimesis.
My sense of the play is that Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night in order to
dramatize certain aspects of the human experience, such as the imitation that individuals
partake in, and the violence that branches out from mimetic desire, combined with the
cruelty that often accompanies laughter. French literary critic Rene Girard has written
extensively about frequent occurrences of mimesis, and the myriad of ways in which the
individual develops his or her sense of selfhood through the act of imitation. Individuals
negotiate between the sense of individuality and personal desire as they attempt to
become the object of someone else’s desire.
The violence of the play reflects a sense of mimetic violence coupled with, and
brought about by, doubling through imitation driven by desire; this violence is not
necessarily the throwing of punches but rather, the cruel interactions of the characters.
Girard argues extensively about the violence that is simultaneous with desire, the drive
toward imitation of others, and the subsequent doubling that occurs through the
enactment of this mimetic violence. Girard’s A Theater of Envy posits his argument of the
connection between mimetic desire and violence, with the intuitive knowledge of the
human experience that Shakespeare possessed. In his book A Theater of Envy, Girard
analyzes the mimetic nature of several plays by Shakespeare, including Twelfth Night,
3
and describes the essence of the play to be the circulation of mimetic desire. Additionally,
in his book Violence and the Sacred he argues that people do act out their desires to
become one another through imitation of others, which naturally produces violence. In
his own way, through the use of the malevolent humor and mimetic violence that are
essential components of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare has successfully dramatized this
aspect of the human experience. My sense of the play is that Shakespeare’s purpose was
to expose the cruelty that so often accompanies comedy, and the ways in which
individuals negotiate their relationships with one other through mimetic desire and
imitating the desired other. Through this circulation of mimetic desire and imitation of
the other, individuals develop their sense of humanity. I believe that Shakespeare, aware
of human mimetic desires, provides an opportunity in Twelfth Night in which to expose
these desires, and attempts to negotiate between imitation and violence in human
relationships.
Shakespeare and Girard were not the only ones who had invested imitation with a
weight of importance; they inherited from ancient Greece an interest in the mimetic
desires that exist in every individual. In his Poetics, Aristotle writes that imitation is one
of the greatest pleasures that people can experience, as it is through copying others that
people learn to be human. At the same time that people discover their humanity through a
systematic doubling, they also begin to feel a sort of claustrophobia that simultaneously
branches out from the desire for such impersonation. Aristotle’s viewpoints concerned
with this conflict between two very human forces intersecting with the etymology and
association made with the word mimesis. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the
4
word “mimesis” as having its origins in the ancient Greek word “μίμησις”and simply
means “imitation”. Although the word has its original roots in Ancient Greece, mimesis
and the systematic doubling and impersonation that is coupled with imitative desires are
especially relevant for the argument posited by Girard, in the mid-twentieth century.
Girard is interested in the mimetic violence that he argues is an aspect of this shared
experience of humankind, which has remained cognizant of its fallibility since the time of
the Biblical Fall, creating a sense of anxiety in the individual, which leads to a desire to
imitate others. By becoming someone else, the individual hopes to avoid the pain of his
or her human weakness, and sense of failure.
In his book Violence and the Sacred, Girard argues that the presence of violence
and desire are fundamental attributes of the human experience, and that they are
negotiated through the act of mimesis. Mimesis is the systematic doubling in which the
subject imitates the object because of the growing desire to become the other, through the
circulation of mimetic violence. Through such desire and the impersonation that follows,
violence takes place as the subject attempts to remove both the individual and the desired
object in an act of usurpation, as the subject negotiates between this internal conflict to
remain himself yet become the desired other. This violence and desire always come
together as the subject attempts to enact his attempts at imitating the desired object. To
Girard, this system of impersonation is so essential to the human experience because
people most actively learn through the process of imitating others. Through imitation
individuals learn what it means to be human as the individual attempts to negotiate
between his own desires and those that he perceives to be the desires of the other,
5
because mimesis operates in a very delicate balance between the individual’s desire and
his or her perceptions of his desired object.
The desiring individual must consider the desires of the other in order to usurp the
desired object’s position and become the other in a grand act of imitative usurpation.
When an individual sees others, a desire to become the other slowly begins to grow
within the individual, operating under the belief that the other leads a fulfilled life that the
individual does not have. Through strong feelings of desire and envy over the other’s
satisfying life, the desiring individual attempts to imitate the desired object, in the hopes
of gaining a happy life as well. Because the subject feels a sensation of immense loss and
incompleteness in his or her own sense of human fallibility and assumes that the object of
desire must not experience the same agony, he or she has a desire to become the other in
an attempt to avoid anxieties. By becoming the other, the subject reasons that he or she
will no longer experience such agony over human frailty, and in avoiding this anxiety,
can begin to lead the happy life of the desired object. Motivated by such strong feelings
of envy towards the desired object, the individual imitates the speech, manners, way of
dressing, and various individual qualities of the other as he or she attempts to begin
leading the life of the desired object. Through enacting this mimetic process, the
individual assumes that by becoming like the other, this perceived happiness may finally
be in reach.
Through the imitative process, the desiring individual begins to erase the line
distinguishing the difference between becoming like the other and becoming the other,
and actually attempts to be the other, as opposed to being like the other, which only
6
implies a similarity. Mimetic desire requires a full attempt to become the other, and
although the process may appear to resemble a psychosis: this is the mode in which
individuals learn and develop into members of their society. Through the strong desires
for the life of the other, the subject must imaginatively destroy his or her object of desire
to displace and eventually become that individual, in the effort to avoid the core pain and
anxiety he or she attempts to avoid. The subject not only wants to become like the desired
object, but by becoming the other, the desiring individual may avoid this agony over his
or her own human weakness. The core of mimetic desire is avoiding the inevitable
anxieties that accompany a fallen humanity. However, despite an individual’s best
attempts to usurp and become the other, he or she falls short because all imitation is
limiting, and continues to depend upon the person imitated, even as it desires that
person’s annihilation. This ineffable relationship between violence, desire, and imitation
continues, present in the arguments Girard posits in his book, Violence and the Sacred, as
Girard describes the cycle of violence that accompanies mimetic desire.
Girard writes that “the victim of this violence both adores and detests it. He
strives to master it by means of a mimetic counter violence and measures his own stature
in proportion to his failure…he must then turn to an even greater violence and seek out an
obstacle that promises to be truly insurmountable” (Girard 148), in a continuous cycle of
desire and violence, navigated through imitation. It is nearly impossible for an individual
to separate himself or herself from the cycle, as it the mimetic desire remains a relentless
drive within the individual, as it establishes a feeling of humanity, and thus truly becomes
him or herself through attempting to become the other. Individuals begin to solidify their
7
personal sense of self as they take on the desired aspects of the other, and through such
imitation, a greater self-image develops in the individual; it is through acting on this
mimetic desire that they begin to embark on the journey to selfhood while taking on the
qualities of the desired object in order to become themselves. One such example is in
adopting the actions and the rhetoric of the desired, because it is through a shared
language that people most often establish and experience a sense of simultaneously
interconnected and individual humanity. The use of words, an organized grammar
structure, and agreed-upon contexts creates individuals and humankind in general.
Through an established language, individuals are able to feel a sense of connection; in
contrast, without language, individuals continue to feel in isolation. Consequently,
rhetoric is a particularly remarkable aspect to study within the arguments of Girard, and
his concerns with imitation, desire, and violence in the mimetic process are particularly
relevant to the human experience. Language is a particularly ubiquitous site for mimesis
to occur, because of the imitative nature of learning and speaking with others.
Language in particular serves as a fine example of the mimetic desire within the
human being. People learn languages through the imitation of the authoritative other, and
imitate those speech patterns, linguistic inflections, and rhetoric of the desired objects.
Because language is such a critical portion of what creates a sense of shared humanity,
linguistic mimesis is an especially illustrative example of the importance of imitation. In
order to become the other, the subject copies the speech of the desired object, the person
he wishes to become through doubling that individual’s rhetoric. The strong desire within
the subject causes an inevitable movement toward violence, as the desiring individual
8
usurps the language of the other, and takes that speech as his or her own through the
mimetic process of imitation. Violence from this linguistic doubling begins in what was
once the subject’s desire to become the other, as he or she kills within him or herself that
which is singularly of the individual and that which is his desired object. The individual
navigates this internal conflict as he or she establishes his or her identity through his
usurpation of the other’s rhetoric, in order to avoid the pain experienced through the
feeling of fallen humanity, in search of the fulfillment he or she suspects that the desired
object experiences. The profundity of Girard’s argument about mimetic desire and
violence is that it reveals we are individuals through membership with a social group.
Mimetic negotiations operate in a form of self-destruction as the desire leads itself
towards conflict, because the subject must destroy that which stands in the way of his or
her desire, and consequently must separate him or herself in order to become the desired
other. Because the other does not conform to the desires of the subject, a metaphorical
sacrifice must be performed to navigate between the attempts of the subject to become
the desired object, and perceived desires of the actual object as an individual. There is a
gap in understanding and perception between the object as his or her own individual self,
and what the subject perceives him or her to be. Because the subject assumes that to
become the desired other, the individual believes he or she will no longer be so acutely
aware of his or her shortcomings as the individual often believes the other must not
experience such anxieties. The subject navigates this conflict by doubling the rhetoric and
actions of the desired object, in the hopes to eventually become as if he or she were the
9
desired other through the act of mimetic imitation, negotiated through the conflict that
arises through attempts to become the other and finally escape from his anxieties.
Girard’s ideas concerning the human experience are particularly profound to
examine the myriad of ways in which people conceive of their individuality, and the
shared experience of being an individual person. However, Girard’s opinions of human
communication are also especially relevant to the study of literature, because literature
serves as an imitation of life itself, an idea originated by Aristotle in his Poetics. In this
paper, I propose that William Shakespeare has written a play that is especially concerned
with the human obsession with imitation and the violence that accompanies this
obsession. The subject matter of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is interested in the doubling
of the twin characters while the play serves as a literary object of Girard’s mimesis,
because literature attempts to serve as a double to real life. Even the title of the play is
evidence of the doubling nature of language: the “two” sound in twelfth, twin, and two
produces a type of physical mimesis of the mouth, as the two lips pull apart as the
individual speaks the words. Due to the presence of so many puns about doubling,
Shakespeare was purposeful in his handling of the subject of doubling in the play.
Through writing a play that is so concerned with a pair of twins, Shakespeare makes it
clear that not only is Twelfth Night a dramatized representation of fictional twins, but due
to the characters’ imitation and the play’s mimesis of reality, Shakespeare facilitates a
larger connection between literature as the twin of life.
To claim that Twelfth Night is solely concerned with comic identity confusion
between a boy and a girl, gender confusion and cross-dressing, clever courtly fools, and
10
capricious characters is to discredit all that Shakespeare has accomplished through
writing this play. In order to fully appreciate all that Twelfth Night offers in order to
better understand the human experience, it is useful to analyze the applicability of
Girard’s writings about mimetic desire, imitation, and the violence that occurs through
these processes. Twelfth Night demonstrates to theatre audiences and readers the ways in
which the acts of desire and violence that accompany mimesis are incredibly jarring.
Indeed, the beauty of Shakespeare’s writing is the fact that all of his works were written
by a man, in his effort to imitate the world around him, and the actors’ attempts to
successfully impersonate his characters so that the audience may think that the actors
disappear and become the characters instead.
Shakespeare’s plays offer a noteworthy doubling found in the environment of the
theatrical. The dramatic arts operate in a mimetic relationship, and particularly good
theatre erases the distinctions between the actors and characters, so that audience
members only see characters. Therefore, the actor must engage in a similar violent act of
mimesis (which the sixteenth century called personation), in a movement toward enacting
his desires to become the character, and this relationship actively found in theatre is
another reason for studying Shakespeare’s plays. Although Girard does not mention the
dramatic arts in his Violence and the Sacred, his arguments of the ineffable connection
between mimesis, desire, and violence are particularly important for Shakespeare’s
works: both in the written words on the pages of his works, and the performed final
products because the actors enact mimetic violence to become the characters while the
play serves as the doubled twin of reality. Following this mode of thinking, Shakespeare
11
is an ideal author in order to better understand Girard’s mimetic theories. Twelfth Night is
especially relevant to Girard’s discussion about imitation, mimetic desire, and violence
because it really cuts to the core of mimesis. In A Theater of Envy, Girard connects the
play’s discussions concerned with self-usurpation, Olivia and Orsino’s narcissisms which
mirror one another, the reflective doubling found in the twins of the play, and the
violence present in the Malvolio-baiting scenes.
Girard makes his move in Violence and the Sacred in order to emphasize the
relationship present between violence, desire and the imitation that is often ascribed to
the mimetic desires of individuals. In Girard’s words, “the unchanneled mimetic impulse
hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting desire…we have then, a selfperpetuating process constantly increasing in simplicity and fervor. By a mental shortcut
that is…self-defeating, he convinces himself that the violence itself is the most distinctive
attribute of this supreme goal! Ever afterward, violence and desire will be linked in his
mind, and the presence of violence will invariably awaken desire” (Girard 148), setting
up the inevitable association drawn between desire, mimesis, and the violence that
frequently transpires. As people circulate the verbal reproductions created through the
mimetic process, a certain power is ascribed to the speech of others because it is through
the imitative usurpation of one another’s words that it is possible to become that which is
desired, and verbal circulation of mimetic desire allows individuals to establish their own
selfhood. Desire becomes an act of doubling as subjects negotiate their yearning to avoid
the agony over their frail humanity by becoming the other by doubling the speech of the
12
desired other, and the sacrifice verbally occurs because the words of the individual no
longer are present, and the rhetoric of the other is adopted.
It is the regular use of speech and language that renders individuals into the fully
developed human beings that we conceive ourselves to be individuals. The ability to give
a communicative response in order to describe conditions from within and to describe the
external world lends itself to the shared experience of humanity. In addition, as Girard
argues, people are able to take on the qualities of those they desire in order to become
that which they desire through the use of mimetic doubling. However, the imitative
process inevitably leads to violence that springs out of the desire to imitate, and language
both creates the shared sense of humanity but causes such a feeling of tension in the
larger culture as subjects compete to take on the role of the desired others. The desiring
subject attempts to navigate through his or her mimetic desires and impersonation
through acts of rhetorical violence. This violence and conflict are the inevitable
consequences that are produced from the negotiations between the desiring subject and
the desired object, and Girard describes the conflict that exists between that the desiring
subject and the individual which is the desired object. He argues that this conflict
between the desiring and the desired leads to the case of the monstrous double, as
individuals ascribe their particular desires upon one another. Girard argues in Violence
and the Sacred, that “the double and the monster are one and the same being” (Girard
160), which emphasizes the close relationship in which the imitative subject connects
with the desired object. Not only do they operate in an inseparable relationship but they
are actually the same entity. Violence rises out of mimesis, but the monstrous double is
13
the product that is generated by the mimetic violence, and the monstrous double causes
great anxiety as well. The brilliance of Girard’s works is his relevance to the human
condition, and that his arguments are not only relevant in a strict academic manner, but
that he is so especially relevant for attempting to study human nature.
However, it is not simply enough to only engage within the immediate arguments
of a philosopher, but an important aspect of literary criticism is its relationship to the
written word, and Girard’s studies on mimesis and its preceding violence offer great
opportunity for a new way to analyze literature, and his theses provide excellent
examinations into human nature. In A Theater of Envy, Girard is able to connect Twelfth
Night with the themes of mimesis, the violence that occurs through such desire, and the
final monstrous double that is produced by such rhetorical conflict. Twelfth Night is
especially relevant to Girard’s discussion that is concerned with mimetic violence
because the play itself is heavily invested in the violence and the monstrous double that is
produced by mimetic desire. In fact, Shakespeare has written human representations of
the monstrous double into this play in the forms of the twins, Viola and Sebastian, and
the competing narcissists, Olivia and Count Orsino. Girard’s book A Theater of Envy
includes two separate essays in his collection that are especially concerned with the
mimesis and the concerns that follow mimesis in Twelfth Night, as the conflict that occurs
in the play is concerned with the violence that arises within the play.
Girard introduces A Theater of Envy with the assertion that Shakespeare is deeply
interested in what he repeatedly attributes to as envy, which Girard extrapolates to mean
specifically attributes that arise out of mimesis and the mimetic violence that regularly is
14
navigated in human communication. “All envy is mimetic” (Girard 5) summarizes the
premise of Girard’s argument, as he structures his own interpretations of Shakespeare’s
works as specific concerns with the conflict that arises out of human speech patterns and
the doubling that occurs through the subject’s imitations of the words of the desired
object, to make them their own. Although Shakespeare may refer to this phenomenon
exactly as envy, Girard believes much of Shakespeare’s work to be concerned with
mimesis and the conflict rooted in the envy that drives people to imitate one another.
Indeed, mimesis is rooted in envy: the desiring subject is envious of that which is the
desired object’s. When linguistically analyzed, the subject usurps the speech of the
desired other in an imitative act. Envy fuels the actions of the desiring, and the individual
begins to imitate the actions and speech of the desired. Shakespeare’s interest in the
human emotion of envy is a very eloquent summation of the human experience, and
Girard’s interest in mimesis intersects powerfully with Shakespeare’s works, as both of
their writings are essential studies based on the human experience.
Girard asserts that “my goal in this study is to show that the more quintessentially
mimetic a critic becomes, the more faithful to Shakespeare he remains…the mimetic
approach reveals an original thinker centuries ahead of his time, more modern than any of
our so-called master thinkers” (Girard 5-6) because he views much of Shakespeare’s
works to be specifically concerned with mimesis. Analyzing Shakespeare’s plays as
particularly invested in the mimetic acts and subsequent violence that arise out of
communication provide profound observations of the human condition. Additionally,
Count Orsino and Olivia serve as other human models of doubling, as their narcissism
15
and great self-love combine to operate in another close relationship of the enactment of
mimesis. The relationship between laughter and cruelty further solidifies the relationship
between language and violence that is present in the play. Malvolio is particularly filled
with self-love and narcissism, wrongly interprets a letter, and through his inability to
interpret such written rhetoric, he actively employs mimesis in his attempt to gain power.
However, his mistake posits him to become the butt of the joke, and the joke attempts to
serve as the comedic scene of the play, yet the shroud of cruelty sits most strikingly over
the what seem to be the self-described funniest scenes.
In addition, this paper seeks to consider the cruelty that is present in laughter,
brought about by the violence that Girard claims accompanies mimetic desire. Although
Twelfth Night is frequently categorized as belonging to the comedy class of
Shakespearian theatre, there is a decidedly dark element within the play, and I believe the
shroud of cruelty that covers the play is an effect of the mimetic violence that occurs in
the plot. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the play seems to relish a
certain cruelty, and I seek to consider the myriad of ways in which the cruelty of laughter
is present throughout Twelfth Night. For example, the joke letter that Malvolio interprets
as from Olivia, and the resulting brutality that is thrust upon him by other character
members who have initiated the humiliated against the Puritan servant. I believe that the
Malvolio-baiting scene is especially pertinent to this discussion, and in fact may unlock
an understanding of the violence present in the play and at the individual level. Finally,
this paper seeks to ascribe the purpose of the twins in the play, and the power that the
doubled maintains throughout the play, or what Girard refers to as the “monstrous
16
double”. The final goal of the theatrical work is the physical placement of the twins
onstage at the same time, because the twins are the ultimate physical manifestation of
mimesis and particularly the monstrous double, as they seem to be the same person yet
they remain separate.
In summation, Girard reveals the mimetic process that occurs within individuals,
and the characters of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. His brilliant arguments based on the
human act of imitation are profound in order to better understand the human experience.
For Girard, mimetic desire and violence are present everywhere, as individuals negotiate
between the desire to double and imitate, and the contrasting desire to erase and destroy
the object of desire. Twelfth Night is a particularly brilliant work in which to serve as a
literary representative of Girard’s argument based on imitative desires, because many of
the events in the plotline relate to mimesis, and Shakespeare has written in two characters
to be human representations of mimesis. And, as Aristotle and many others has affirmed,
literature is the imitation of life. Studying great literary works is an excellent tool in
which to study the intricacies of the human experience.
17
CHAPTER TWO
In this chapter, I am interested in the ways in which mimetic violence operates
within Shakespeare’s contemporary age’s images concerning the Puritan, and how these
images can lead to a greater understanding of the violence of the Malvolio-baiting
subplot in particular, since it is an especially disturbing aspect of the play. The verbal
violence at the hands of the other household members demonstrates the power of a
fractured subjectivity at an individual level in Twelfth Night. Malvolio’s dialogue with Sir
Topas in the dark room scene prompts a rupture of Malvolio’s sense of self, and the
sacrifice officially takes place in Act Five. Malvolio’s actual sacrifice is not his physical
death, but the death of his previous imagined selfhood. This sacrifice is so profoundly
cruel because the other characters offered Malvolio’s subjectivity as the sacrificial object
without his consent, and caused the break of Malvolio’s internal subjectivity. Although
the Malvolio-baiting scenes may be seen by some as moments of comedy, a mimetic
analysis of Twelfth Night reveals the cruelty that accompanies the larger plot. However,
the sacrifice of Malvolio’s selfhood is crucial to the meaning of the play; his
metaphorical death is as necessary as sacrifice must be, and is actually a moment that
must occur in order for the reunion to take place in the final scene. Girard claims in his A
Theater of Envy: “my goal in this study is to show that the more quintessentially
‘mimetic’ a critic becomes, the more faithful to Shakespeare he remains” (Girard 5), and
I believe that Girard is such an ideal critic to study alongside Shakespeare’s works,
particularly Twelfth Night, because the Malvolio-baiting scenes are so exemplary for
Girard’s theses about the connections between desire and violence, especially with the
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need for the presence of a scapegoat to sacrifice. The sacrifice of Malvolio is a profound
moment of the play in which to analyze the inherent cruelty found in Twelfth Night and
upon considering the connection between laughter and cruelty, as this play particularly
reveals this relationship. Although Feste, while still playing the part of the Fool and
changing into his Sir Topas priest apparel, quips “and I would I were the first that ever
dissembled in such a gown” (4.2.4-5), readers analyzing Twelfth Night for its mimetic
qualities would understand that it is Sir Topas’s violent questioning of Malvolio’s sanity
that is intended to be the humor present in Act Four, Scene Two. But, as is common with
humor, a certain amount of malevolence exists underneath the laughter as Sir Topas
performs the sacrifice of Malvolio. However, one question remains: how is it that the
other household attendants decide to choose the stoic servant as the object who must be
sacrificed? I believe that much of the answer can be found in one of the first descriptions
of Malvolio in the entire play; Maria says of him “sometimes he is a kind of puritan”
(2.3.126), thus introducing this noteworthy link between the Puritan servant as scapegoat,
and the use of the Puritan as a trope in the early modern English literature and life. Could
it be that Malvolio was singled out as the scapegoat to sacrifice because the other
household attendants were deeply entrenched in symbols that were common in the early
modern English tropes about Puritans?
Puritans are frequently stereotyped as the particularly strict members of early
modern English society, and many people today frequently view the Puritans’ practices
and beliefs as severe examples of the archaic Christian practices of the era that were more
repressive than they were anything else. However, certain evidence found in the literature
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and culture of early modern England reveals that the Puritans were unlike any of the
stereotypes we have today of the early modern Puritans. Kristen Poole’s Radical Religion
from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England reveals
several stereotype-shattering images of Puritans from Shakespeare’s era. Poole’s studies
of the Puritan culture prove that such stereotypes of the rigid Puritans constantly
attempting to rule their worlds with a heavy-handed repression in favor of an extremely
tight-fisted Christianity, are in fact simply a trope that our culture has placed as an
association with the early modern English culture of Shakespeare’s era. Poole argues that
in the literature (including the works authored by Shakespeare) there are in fact examples
of the fictional Puritan as a deviant figure, consistently transgressing the contemporary
taboos of early modern England in favor of a kind of desire for the carnal pleasures of
life. Poole claims that in the literature of the era, Puritans were often the characters driven
by gluttony, lust, and pride, particularly in satirical works. These literary Puritans were
often the characters that would turn out to be the scapegoats put up for sacrifice, when a
story line called for a literal or metaphoric sacrifice. Following this observation from
Poole, Malvolio stands in as a placeholder for a trope that early modern English
audiences would already be familiar with: the Puritan in the place as the figure to be
sacrificed. The audience members of Shakespeare’s era would presumably recognize this
literary trope in the play, and understand that the Puritan must become the scapegoat for
sacrifice. Early modern England, particularly the literature produced in this time period
often placed the blame for troubles on the Puritan, as his status consistently existed in a
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liminal type of a member of this in-between category, caught between religiosity and
carnal overindulgence.
Poole questions the accepted notions and tropes of the identity of those early
modern English individuals known as the Puritans, particularly the roles that they
occupied in early modern England. English priest John Benbrige’s 1646 sermon serves as
a warning against heretical individuals in his sermon titled “God’s Fury, England’s Fire,
or A Plaine Discovery of those Spiritual Incendiaries, which have set the Church and
State on Fire”. Benbrige describes “their hypocrisy in all they did…their Reformation
was but a greater Deformation, and that opened yet wider the Flood-gates of their
Desolation”, combining both the heretical imagery of the early modern Puritan with
allusions to the English Reformation that had occurred not even a century before
Benbrige gave his sermon. As a man in a socially hierarchical position of authority, a
priest provided double edged warnings to parishioners: avoid contact with, and do not
become, the Puritan. Poole notes in Radical Religion that “in the first half of the
seventeenth century the term most often designated those who sought to separate
themselves (in varying degrees) from the dominant ecclesiastical community” (Poole 3),
further connecting the relationship between the Puritan as a threat for the already
established religious hierarchy of the period. The resistance of the Puritans against the
early modern ecclesiastical regulations demonstrated the dangerous degree of power that
these individuals possessed. If it were not for the Puritans’ opposition to submit to the
early modern English church’s status quo, sermons such as Benbrige’s would not be
necessary, as priests would not feel the threat of a rebellious energy, demanding to be
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quenched. Can it be that readers and critics today must wrap their minds around this
image of the dissident Puritan, when all of the contemporary tropes concerning Puritans
that we rely so heavily up on today, challenge the notions and images that we all rely
upon when considering the reality of these individuals? Poole argues that indeed, such
stereotypes must be re-imagined, as there is a plethora of growing evidence that “in its
early modern literary usage, the term most often signified social elements that revisited
categorization” (Poole 4) in contrast to the popular stereotypes. Unlike the typecast of the
traditional Puritan as overtly religious, Poole asserts that “the puritan’s purity is thus
revealed as a sanctimonious façade” (Poole 7), because the early modern English Puritan
was obsessed with carnal pleasures, such as “lascivious” (Poole 8) sex acts, drinking, and
gluttony. She notes that “in early modern literature, it is the drunken, gluttonous, and
lascivious puritan who predominates” (Poole 12), and this image circulated throughout
the culture. “In modern scholarship, Malvolio has long stood as the puritan poster boy;
his concern with social borders, and his condemnation of festivity place him in direct
opposition to the irreverent and riotous words of Sir Toby Belch” (Poole 9), however, in
Malvolio’s contemporary age, Puritans were seen to be anything besides overtly
regulatory, as several anti-Puritan writings demonstrate.
Anthony Wood (1632-1695) mentioned “the schismatical Puritan” in the
“Athenae Oxonienses”, a historical document that detailed the writers and bishops who
had been educated at the University of Oxford. Additionally, Henry Parker (1604-1652)
and John Ley (1583-1662) wrote “A discourse concerning Puritans tending to a
vindication of those, who unjustly suffer by the mistake, abuse, and misapplication of
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that name” in 1641, and their text actually names the antipuritans and distinguished
between the Catholics and other Protestants who were opposed to Puritanism. The
authors note that antipuritans “persecute” the puritans out of hate for them, noting “that
the hatred of Puritans flowes and descends from the highest of the Clergie to the lowest;
and young students in the University know it now their wisest course to study the
defamation of Puritans”, revealing a striking contemporary opinion of the English
puritan. The text describes “this detested odious name of Puritan first began in the
Church presently after the Reformation, but now it extends it selfe further, and gaining
strength as it goes, it diffuses its polysonous ignominy further, and being not contented to
Gangrene Religion, Ecclesiastical and Civil policy, it now threatens destruction to all
morality also”, complicating the early modern critique of the puritan as a man of pure
religion yet immorality, even going so far to name him the “devil Puritan”, solidifying the
tradition of revulsion directed toward the puritan.
J. L. Simmons’s article “A Source for Shakespeare’s Malvolio: The Elizabethan
Controversy with the Puritans” offers an analysis of Malvolio’s position within a network
of discourse about Puritanism that took place in Elizabethan England, both within the
play and off stage. Simmons compares the Puritans’ obsession with their biblical
interpretation of justice and seeking their own desired truth with Malvolio’s frantic search
of the joke letter: “The Puritan comes to Scripture, like Malvolio to his letter, bent upon
discovering his own justification” (Simmons 183), as Malvolio and Puritans alike seek
out their own validation within sources that may not contain such justification at all.
Within the play, Malvolio’s desire to believe the letter’s claims are about him is
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analogous to the Puritans’ obsession with their notions of a stringent religiosity. Simmons
notes that this single handed obsession with this type of frenzied reading, meant to justify
one’s behavior, “is an inevitable stage in the Puritan’s progress” (Simmons 184), but is
not specific whether he is speaking about a Puritan in the general sense, or about
Malvolio individually. However, I do not believe that these specifics are necessarily
particularly significant because such images of Puritans rely on the tropes about Puritans
that were specific to Elizabethan English and were regularly circulated throughout
Shakespeare’s world. Additionally, this lack of specification about which Puritan
Simmons refers to is a reflection of the reliance of established tropes in general, linked
with the purification of a word, directly related to the act of doubling itself. On the one
hand, understanding the notion of a purification of the word is important within a
discussion of Girard’s idea of mimetic desire, because the process of purifying the word
relies on a systematic doubling. Individuals often reproduce a circulation of word
purification as they conflate their notion of what the specific word signifies with the word
itself, in a process of linguistic doubling. It seems as though Puritans and Malvolio as
well, rely very heavily on this process of word purification, read both biblical
commandments and letters alike, with a sense of finding self-justification in both,
whether it is the joke letter “from Olivia” or in the scripture of the bible. Malvolio
conflates both the actual message of the letter with what he wishes to read, producing a
form of linguistic mimesis. Through a similar process, literary scholars may conflate their
notions of Puritanism with Malvolio’s identity, and the role that Malvolio plays within
the plot of Twelfth Night. For example, after reading many articles linking Malvolio with
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Elizabethan English Puritanism, scholars often explain Malvolio’s role as representative
of the Puritan tropes of Shakespeare’s world, when Malvolio may represent something
else entirely.
Edward Cahill’s article “The Problem with Malvolio” re-directs the significance
of Malvolio’s presence in Twelfth Night. Instead of focusing on the label of Malvolio as a
Puritan, Cahill focuses his analysis of Malvolio’s role within the play as a unique force
with the Shakespearian tradition. Cahill points out that like many Shakespearian plays,
the central plot of Twelfth Night has roots in other dramatic and prose works, but one
component to the play’s plotline is unique: Malvolio’s storyline. “the subplot, involving
Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria, and their ‘gull’, Malvolio, was entirely Shakespeare’s
invention…(Shakespeare) explores the themes of identity, desire, and the confusion of
both” (Cahill 62), further solidifying a Girard-esque relationship between Malvolio’s
failed negotiations between his mimetic desire and violence. However, Cahill brings up a
thought provoking notion of the significance of Malvolio’s story: if the rest of the play
was part of the already existing literary tradition, Shakespeare was aware of the
significance of the power of the mimetic, as Girard has noted. Cahill, too, notices the
importance of what he describes as the “gulling” of Malvolio, performed by Maria, Sir
Toby, and Sir Andrew, and he claims that the joke “is intended to make Malvolio an
extreme and ridiculous version of the person he desires to be. On another level, however,
it also seems clearly calculated to destroy his very identity” (Cahill 70), highlighting the
play’s relationship with violence. In the first part of the play, Shakespeare draws the
audience’s attention to the cruelty that Malvolio directs to the other characters, but in the
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second part of the play, the cruelty is circulated back to him, in the form of the other
household attendants’ revenge. However, their joke continues to gradually grow
throughout the play, leading Malvolio away further and further from his original sense of
self. The recirculation of the desire for violence through the mimetic process leads the
other household attendants to cause a fracture within Malvolio, evident precisely in the
final scene, as he departs from the scene, swearing revenge. Cahill’s interpretation of Act
Five is worth considering, as he offers a unique explanation of Malvolio’s declaration of
revenge. He writes: “his true revenge, we might say, is his refusal to allow the main plot
to be completely resolved before the end of the play”, (Cahill 77), further problematizing
the play’s ending. This interpretation is very reminiscent of W.H. Auden’s dislike of
Twelfth Night and his aversion to the “inverted quotations” around the fun typically
attributed to the play. Although there are some moments of comedy throughout the play,
much of Twelfth Night is covered with a shroud of cruelty can be found in scenes such as
that in Act Five, in which Malvolio simultaneously acts as a scapegoat to be sacrificed to
restore the communal happiness and prevents such happiness for the other characters.
Girard’s emphasis of the alternating desires for mimesis and violence holds
significant weight in an analysis of the violence that is present in Twelfth Night. This selfcontinuing process of impersonation and violence calls for a scapegoat, which develops
specifically out of the violence of mimetic desires. The online Oxford English Dictionary
defines the noun scapegoat as “a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or
faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency”, and additionally describes the
biblical root of the word: “a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had
26
symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it”. The historical origin of the word, a
combination of escape and goat, can be dated to the sixteenth century according to the
Oxford English Dictionary. For Girard, the scapegoat has an important function in the
circulation of the mimetic process, as a desire to annihilate accompanies the desire for
imitation, and the scapegoat frequently is the physical embodiment of the figure to
destroy in a mock sacrifice. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is particularly invested with
imagery of a metaphorical sacrifice and an active concern with the scapegoat; in the case
of this problem play, the scapegoat is Olivia’s servant Malvolio. I believe that the
Malvolio-baiting and fake exorcism scenes are imperative to gaining a better
understanding of the circulation of mimetic violence that remains throughout Twelfth
Night. I will analyze the significance of these scenes within the violence that dominates
the play and Girard’s arguments concerned with sacrifice and the importance of the
scapegoat. The audiences of the early modern English theatres would be aware of the
iconography of the puritan, and would therefore have a deeper understanding of the
significance of Malvolio as the play’s scapegoat.
Throughout Twelfth Night, as the aristocratic characters of the play soliloquize,
the servants’ subplot develops, featuring the elaborate Malvolio-baiting in the hopes that
they may teach him a lesson. As Olivia describes Malvolio, he is “sick with self-love”
(1.1.82), and his obvious narcissistic sense of superiority over the other servants marks
him as a target for the practical joke, designed to flip his self-importance on its head. The
first scene that focuses on Malvolio’s conflict with other characters transpires in Act
Two, Scene Three, as Maria chastises Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste for making too
27
much racket. However, Malvolio enters, asking “Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s
house…is there no respect of place, persons, or time in you?” (2.3.88-92), and humiliates
Maria several lines later in the scene. “Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at
any thing more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule. She shall
know if it, by this hand” (2.3.121-124) and exits. Immediately afterward, Maria replies in
a comparison to an ass, “Go shake your ears” (2.3.125), and plans a practical joke on
Malvolio, designed to put him back in his place. Although Malvolio embarrasses Maria
in front of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste, she quickly turns Malvolio’s cruelty in on
himself, presenting a new turn in the play’s circulation of verbal violence. Several of the
characters of Twelfth Night, such as Maria and Feste, have an ability to transfer a
retaliatory blow in response to violent verbal performance. In Act Two, Scene Three,
Malvolio may have humiliated Maria by chastising her, but she was successfully able to
manipulate his own cruelty against him, and created a plan for revenge in order to shame
Malvolio.
Maria includes the revelers in the trick, as they all detest the puritan servant’s
conceit, and all of these characters have a strong desire to observe retribution against
Malvolio. Throughout the play, Malvolio exhibits a strong desire to advance socially by
debasing other characters, in an evident desire for imitation of the higher classes, as
Malvolio consistently humiliates others in order to boost his own standing, continuing
Girard’s cycle of desire, imitation, and violence. Malvolio clearly abhor Sir Toby, Sir
Andrew, and Feste, but he singles out Maria to shame publicly. Because Malvolio turns
his verbal performance into a diatribe against her, in a move that marginalized individuals
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often perform, Maria takes his own cruelty and re-directs it back to him, continuing a
circulation of violence. Maria’s plans for Malvolio’s revenge include an act of imitation
as well, in a written form, as she leaves an anonymous love letter in a place where he will
happen upon it, and writes in a handwriting that closely resembles Olivia’s, so that he
may be led to believe that his mistress is in love with him, in order to manipulate his
actions. While Malvolio employs his mimetic desire in his speech and actions, this trick
letter to Malvolio represents a written form of mimesis. The letter will later be a
component for the doubling of humiliation that circulates between the servants; in this
earlier scene of the play, Malvolio embarrasses Maria but she is effective in repeating this
desire for degradation and placing it on him instead. Maria’s genius is not only that she is
able to quickly devise a plot in order to humble Malvolio, but that she recognizes the
specific desire that Malvolio has for imitation. Her recognition of this mimetic desire
gives her the opportunity to turn his own desires against him, as she plants the joke letter,
another example of imitation.
The Malvolio-baiting scene in Act Two, Scene Three reveals the trick on
Malvolio, as both the other characters and the audience act as voyeurs. Although the joke
letter does not specifically name Malvolio as the beloved, upon reading it, he deduces
that Olivia had to have meant him. The conspirators wait to observe Malvolio’s reaction,
and indeed, he demonstrates to the others what they already believed they knew about
him: that Malvolio delights in a certain kind of self-love, which was his initial sin.
However, the letter includes directions for Malvolio to wear an outfit that Olivia actually
despises: yellow, cross-stitched garters, and as he reads “she thus advises thee that sighs
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for thee” (2.5.134-135.) he decides to follow the directions of the letter, as he finds proof
of its validity in the line “M.O.A.I. doth sway my life” (2.5.100), concluding that the
M.O.A.I. surely meant Malvolio, and that Olivia was in love with him. The written
reproduction and Malvolio’s vocal utterances of M.O.A.I. are both representations of the
doubling found within the letters. Because Malvolio finds his image in the initials
M.O.A.I, he claims them as his own and continues to behave as the letter instructs to act.
His ownership over M.O.A.I. empowers his desire to imitate the directions that the letter
gives to the recipient. However, Olivia became disquieted by the appearance of her
previously stoic servant, and concluded that Malvolio must have become crazed; the
household attendants come to the same conclusion (and had long believed that about
Malvolio) and decide to send for the curate Sir Topas to perform an exorcism. Malvolio
is isolated in a dark room, as Feste enters, dressed as Sir Topas, in order to perform a
mock exorcism. However, rather than exorcise anything from Malvolio, the exorcism
seems to demonstrate the metaphorical sacrifice that Girard is interested in when
discussing the effects of mimetic desire and violence; it appears to satisfy the others with
a certain desire for vengeance, rather than to erase anything from Malvolio. In the last
scene of the play, the abused servant crosses the stage, swearing revenge on those who
had wronged him.
Malvolio’s efforts to augment his social status fail miserably, although his desire
is not for nothing: he does in fact double the speech and mannerisms of those who are in
positions of power over him, and even those who are not in the play but are ubiquitous
presences in early modern England. The aristocracy (including characters of Twelfth
30
Night such as Olivia and Orsino) spoke and acted differently than those who were their
household attendants. The noble members of the households speak in a language that
more closely resembles courtly speech, while the servants and household attendants
speak in a freer form of prose. Malvolio’s imitation of the speech and habits of (what he
perceives to be) the sobriety of the nobility as he moves toward the mimetic element, in
order to gain a higher position in society. Malvolio first appears onstage as Feste jokes
with Olivia, and Malvolio replies, “I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary
fool that has no more brain than a stone…I protest I take these wise men that crow so at
these set kind of fools no better than the fools’ zanies” (1.5.76-81.), revealing his disgust
with the “lower” people around him.
Although Girard describes the universality of the mimetic desire present within
individuals, at times, is not specifically effective enough for an individual to act upon his
or her mimetic desires to socially advance. Malvolio’s predicament continues throughout
the play as a carry-over of Girard’s notions about the problematic nature of mimesis:
although the desiring individual craves becoming the other, the double that is produced
through the mimetic process is not really the individual’s double, but an imagined,
narcissistic self. Malvolio imagines throughout the play that by acting superior to the
others, he may be able to really become superior to them. However, characters such as
Maria and Feste see the narcissistic Malvolio that manifests itself throughout the course
of the play.
Malvolio’s failed efforts to enact his mimetic desires actually cause Sir Andrew,
Sir Toby, Maria, and Feste to plan the elaborate Malvolio-baiting in the play. Malvolio is
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a servant who believes that he is better and imagines himself to be a member of the
aristocracy. His narcissism is reflected back to him in his doubled image, the Malvolio of
Act Two, Scene Five, and his visible narcissism increases his own anxieties throughout
the play. Although he appears to only have a desire for social advancement, Shakespeare
has Malvolio represent a dramatic example of mimetic desire. While attempting to
imitate the habits of the aristocracy, Malvolio also sees the other household attendants as
candidates for his own scapegoats to sacrifice, even if they are socially superior to him,
such as Sir Toby and Sir Andrew. Each imitation based in mimetic desire calls for a
sacrifice, and Malvolio’s cruelty towards those he sees as below him is an ideal site in
which to imagine the way that he circulates mimetic violence throughout the play.
However, his circulation of violence is turned against him as he discovers the joke letter,
and begins to descend into the trap that Maria sets for him, specifically designed to
humble Malvolio and remind him that he is not a member of the aristocracy. The joke
letter succeeds so well because Malvolio’s desire to become a noble is evident to the
other characters, who are eager to see his downfall; they are able to turn his mimetic
desire against him, and manipulate his desire by leading him toward resembling a
maniac.
Malvolio’s exhilaration over the letter is not an excitement of his mistress’s
supposed love for him, but that this potential relationship could mean his social
advancement. Malvolio fantasizes about “Calling my officers about me, in my branched
velvet gown, having come from a daybed, where I have left Olivia sleeping” (2.5.42-44)
representing both his power over his servants, in a reversal of his constant status as a
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servant responding to the orders of those of a higher ranking than him, and in a sexual
reversal in which he sleeps with the woman who was previously his boss. He continues
verbalizing his reversal fantasy “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” (2.5.4749), and specifically names Toby and describes how he would upbraid his new “kinsman
Toby” (2.5.49), especially for his love of drink. The scene continues as Malvolio reads
the letter, “to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear
fresh…go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still,
the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers” (2.5. 130-140),
“revealing” Olivia’s love for her servant, and at the same time, serving as a temptation
for Malvolio’s hunger for social advancement, as the letter further drives Malvolio’s
strange countenance of Act 3, Scene 4, as he appears to be a madman, dressed in yellow
cross-gartered stockings, and acts boorishly to the other characters. Olivia commands that
her servants and Sir Toby tend to Malvolio’s madness, which he reads as a positive
development, “Why, everything adheres together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of
a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance…Nothing that can be can
come between me and the full prospect of my hopes” (3.4.71-75), believing that Olivia’s
response to be a sign of her love for him, signaling what he interprets to be the impetus
for his social progress.
In his A Theater of Envy, Girard states that “all envy is mimetic” (Girard 5)
because at the root of the desire to imitate exists a strong yearning to become the desired
other, since this desired other appears to have a fulfilled life in the eyes of the observing
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subject. It is precisely a coveting of the desired object’s life, in order that the desiring
subject may escape from their human anxieties. The relationship between Girard’s
“mimesis” and Shakespeare’s “envy” remain closely linked to another:
“Like mimetic desire, envy subordinates a desired something to the someone who
enjoys a privileged relationship with it. Envy covets the superior being that
neither the someone or something alone, but the conjunction of the two seem to,
possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to a lack of being that puts the envious to
shame.” (Girard 4)
In Twelfth Night, Malvolio’s desire for social advancement reflects this relationship
between envy and mimetic desire. He believes that he should really be a member of the
aristocracy, although he is really a servant; this incongruity between his fantasy and
reality drives his desire for imitation of the aristocratic characters. However, Malvolio’s
desires are originally based on his cognitive dissonance regarding the nobles’ social
standing and anxiety for his lack of social position as a servant, connecting the link
between envy and imitation. He believes that the habits of an individual should determine
one’s social standing and feels an internal conflict that drunkards such as Sir Toby are
nobles, while the stalwart Malvolio remains a servant. Much like the doubled being is an
imagined figure, the superior social position of the aristocracy is an image that Malvolio
creates, and it is actually this image of his life as a noble that leads him to fantasize about
his potential sexual relationship with his mistress. It is not the reality of becoming a
noble, but the imagined fantasy that Malvolio creates that fuels his desire to obtain a
higher social status. The anxiety that he experiences is precisely his worry over his “lack
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of being” (Girard 4), as he despairs over his low social position. I believe that the “lack of
being” (Girard 4) is related to the feelings of human fallibility that is within each
individual that leads to the desire to imitate so as to avoid this feeling.
In Violence and the Sacred (1972), Girard describes the relationship between the
individual’s envy of the desired object and the individual’s desire to move toward
impersonation:
“the unchanneled mimetic impulse hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting
desire. It invites its own rebuffs, and those rebuffs will in turn strengthen the mimetic
inclination. We have, then, a self-perpetuating process” (Girard 148) that will continue as
the desiring, envious individual conceives of his or her subjectivity between negotiations
of a cycle of envy-desire-imitation-violence. Malvolio becomes a victim in a circulation
of violence and contempt that he had started in Act Two, Scene Three in which he talks
down to and reprimands the other members of the household, who are socially his equals,
and superiors, but in his mind, are inferior people.
The violence that accompanies mimetic desire becomes the need to perform a
sacrifice, metaphorical or literal, in which the subject may obliterate that which he or she
desires to become, in order to destroy the division between the self and the object, thus
becoming the object. Girard’s Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World offers a
theological analysis of the need for sacrifice that is not only relevant to gain a more
profound understanding of Christianity, but is relevant to the study of the relationship
between desire, violence, and scapegoating in which the characters (such as Maria, Feste,
Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and particularly Malvolio himself) of Twelfth Night engage within
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the Malvolio-baiting scenes. To Girard, the ineffable relationship between desire and
violence cannot be separated, and thus, sacrifice is a major component. In his book,
Girard states that “what sacrifices the victim is the blow delivered by the sacrifice, the
violence that kills the victim, annihilating it and placing it above everything else by
making it in some sense immortal” (Girard 226), in an act that at the same time
immortalizes both the sacrificed being and the act of sacrifice itself. For Girard, the most
important moment in sacrifice, the point that is itself the most essentially meaningful is
the moment of the blow of the sacrifice. Following Girard’s opinion on sacrifice, I
believe that the precise moment of this sacrificial act in Twelfth Night is the scene in
which Feste appears before Malvolio in his Sir Topas the curate garb, sent to supposedly
exorcise the malady from Malvolio. Because his subplot eventually takes over the
broader plotline of the play, I believe that Twelfth Night immortalizes Malvolio. In fact,
King Charles I (1600-1649) had crossed off the title Twelfth Night and instead wrote
“Malvolio” on his copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio, demonstrating the power of
Malvolio’s story within the larger plotline of the play.
The “Dark Room scene” of Act Four, Scene Two is the climax of Malvoliobaiting trick, serving as the moment of sacrifice for the entire work, and to understand the
cruelty that remains present throughout the play. The cruelty that circulates throughout
the play is a metaphorical violence that stems from the desire of the characters’
competitions through verbal performances. Feste, in the role of Sir Topas the curate,
approaches Malvolio in the dark room, and promises to cure the servant of the demon that
ails him to become manic. In the dark room, the clown appears as a physical doubling of
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the curate to communicate with a figure that he had helped to create: the insane Malvolio.
Feste has two identities in this meta-theatrical scene, which speaks to both the mimesis of
the play and in theatre as an art. This scene in Twelfth Night offers an example of the
performative nature of imitation: like an actor in a play, the individual must interpret
what he or she believes to be the habits that make up the being of the desired other, in
order to become like the other. Earlier in the play, Malvolio takes up what he believes is
the essence of the aristocracy, in his hopes to become a member of the aristocracy. In the
dark room scene, Feste takes up the conduct and being of the curate, while he performs as
Sir Topas. Ultimately, the initial act of mimesis is an act of performance, in the
essentialist belief that enacting the behavior of the other will cause the desiring individual
to become like the other. Feste reveals that Malvolio’s prior verbal performances with the
other characters were simply that: a performance. However, yet again, another character
recirculates Malvolio’s mimetic desires against him, this time in the form of a fake
exorcism.
In the dark room, Malvolio begs Feste/Sir Topas to give him the benefit of the
doubt and listen to him “Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged. Good Sir Topas, do not
think I am mad. They have laid me here in hideous darkness” (4.2.26-28), for although
Malvolio has been branded as the object of the cruel laughter of the others, he knows and
recognizes that his sanity remains intact throughout the fake exorcism. However, as Sir
Topas, Feste continues to speak with “the demon” specifically designed to cause
Malvolio to doubt his own sanity. Malvolio argues with him that “this house is dark as
ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell. And I say, there was never man thus
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abused. I am no more mad than you are. Make the trial of it in any constant question”
(4.2.40-43), as the house is shrouded in such dark ignorance because each of the
characters of the household reaffirmed the validity of Malvolio’s insanity. In reply to
Malvolio’s descriptions of the dark room, Feste as Sir Topas states “Why, it hath bay
windows transparent as barricades, and the clerestories toward the south-north are as
lustrous as ebony. And yet complainest thou of obstruction?” (4.2.33-35), revealing a
pattern of banter. Sir Topas commands that Feste must not speak to Malvolio, who begs
for a pen and paper to write to Olivia. Feste says he will not bring back anything for
Malvolio, and instead continues to question him instead when Malvolio claims that he is
as sane as any man in Illyria. However, Feste does eventually bring Malvolio a pen,
paper, and a candle so that he may write his letter to Olivia, but only after performing the
mock exorcism.
In the final scene of the play, Malvolio attempts to make his pains known,
although at that point, his attempts to gain a sense of justice for a punishment that
matched his humiliation are long past. The final scene of the play in which Malvolio was
sacrificed, and singled out as the scapegoat in order to satisfy the violent desires of the
other household attendants, is critical for an understanding. Sir Topas questions
Malvolio’s sanity in such a profound manner that it causes an even greater angst within
Malvolio, following the trick letter that had reversed his mimetic desire and violence onto
himself. This moment of sacrifice is so important for understanding Malvolio’s fractured
subjectivity, because once an individual’s identity (which includes his or her sanity) is
questioned, that person begins to doubt the image of their self-image, leading to this
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feeling of a broken sense of self. Ultimately, it exists as a form of sacrifice within the
individual, as the individual’s subjectivity is broken, and so is the self-imagined
individual, because the individual can only withstand so many attacks to his or her
distinctive sense of subjectivity before such subjectivity will splinter, and eventually
completely collapse. With the sacrifice of Malvolio, as he storms offstage swearing
revenge, the twins are able to appear onstage together, and the reunion can be possible,
along with the healing of the community. As Girard believes in his observations of the
cycle of mimetic desire and violence, a scapegoat must always exist, in which the
community is able to release the communal desires for violence. However, the play may
end with the healed community of Illyria, but the image of Malvolio remains as forever
fractured in the minds of the audience and characters alike.
To conclude, I believe that because of the contemporary hatred toward puritans
and in part to his Puritanism, Malvolio unwittingly becomes the target to serve as the
scapegoat within the circulation of cruelty present in Twelfth Night. His sense of
superiority, possibly related to his puritan uprightness, is the source of his ideals for a
higher social status over other characters such as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew.
His cruelty toward Maria necessitated the revenge upon Malvolio, and the others took
advantage of his want for a higher social status, fueling the trick letter. More than any
erotic or amorous desires for his mistress, Malvolio’s hunger for societal advancement
drives his enthusiasm for the letter from Olivia, within the Malvolio-baiting subplot. An
analysis of Malvolio’s supposed Puritanism provides a thought provoking dialogue on
both the Elizabethan English tropes about Puritans, and an interesting discussion of the
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notion of the purification of the word. Due to the cruel energy of resentment and violence
present in the Malvolio-baiting scenes, I believe that Twelfth Night is an ideal example in
which to imagine Girard’s philosophy about mimetic violence and the desire for imitation
in a dramatic setting.
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CHAPTER THREE
The scenes in Twelfth Night that would most typically elicit laughter from the
audiences are often moments of a type of verbal violence, in which characters attempt to
negotiate the connected desire to imitate with the similar desire to annihilate. A certain
darkness enshrouds the play, but only covertly, because as is often the case for the
relationship between violence and comedy, the locus of the malevolence of laughter lies
beneath the surface of a joke, rather than to be explicitly exposed. The violent laughter
that the play Twelfth Night elicits is very similar to the cruelty that is regularly present in
humor, as the two seemingly unrelated elements actually operate in a close relationship,
whereby one informs and relies on the presence of the other. In particular, the Malvoliobaiting and fake exorcism scenes of Twelfth Night may initially appear to the audiences to
be moments of comic relief in the play, this subplot reveals the cruelty found in our
laughter. This joke that is central to the subplot of the play can offer an interesting
dramatic representation of the connection between laughter and cruelty in the entirety of
Twelfth Night. The presence of the malevolent laughter in this Shakespearian dark
comedy is especially relevant to the argument of Charles Baudelaire’s 1863 book The
Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, especially the sixth chapter of his book to what
he refers to as “On the Essence of Laughter”. In this chapter, Baudelaire examines the
relationship between laughter and cruelty that is an especially succinct yet profound
exploration of the significance of the malevolent.
Baudelaire’s ideas about laughter and what he refers to as caricatures are greatly
informed by the philosophy of the Christian psychologist Louis Bourdaloue; Baudelaire
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notes that the quote “the Sage laughs not save in fear and trembling”, is frequently
attributed to Bourdaloue, and this quote serves as an ideal starting point in which to
consider the significance of the relationship between comedy and evil. Baudelaire
believes that this quote associated with Bourdaloue is particularly significant because
“the Sage takes a very good look before allowing himself to laugh, as though some
residue of uneasiness and anxiety must still be left him…the comic vanishes altogether
from the point of view of absolute power and knowledge” (Baudelaire 149), and like
Girard, Baudelaire uses a theological framework in order to explore a significant aspect
of the human experience. To Baudelaire, the Sage represents an image of an Orthodox
Christian, well versed in the holiness of biblical scholarship in order to structure a
worldview founded in religious purity. Because of his knowledge of religion, the sacred,
and the profane, the Sage automatically recognizes the extensive separation between the
good and holy, and the evil that is found in laughter. His “absolute power and
knowledge” (Baudelaire 149) prevents the Sage from laughing, because as Baudelaire
describes, there is a Satanic force found within the comedy of the caricature. Girard is
interested in the impact of the biblical fall of humanity, and in a similar sense, so is
Baudelaire; he even connects the relationship between evil and laughter as a byproduct of
the biblical fall. Because of the imperfect status of humankind after the biblical fall,
laughter is an indication of a separation from what is holy.
Baudelaire asserts that “the comic is one of the clearest tokens of the Satanic in
man” (Baudelaire 151) and for this reason as well, the Sage simply cannot laugh: to laugh
signifies a complete disconnect from the divine, for a laugh reveals the human
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imperfection after the biblical fall. “The laugh on his lips is a sign of just as great a
misery as the tears in his eyes (Baudelaire 150), revealing the sinister power found in the
act of laughing. The malicious laugh at the caricature connects with Girard’s writings
about the simultaneous desire for imitation and the corresponding desire for destruction,
because a caricature is an example of an act of imitative doubling. A caricature is a
doubled image itself, because it is a written or drawn representation of the caricature
creator’s image of the object or individual that the creator uses to represent his or her own
perspective of that individual or object. The reproduced image is not the actual thing or
person, but because it is a representation, it is naturally a doubling that the caricature
artist creates of his or her image of the caricatured object; the focus is removed from the
object itself to the caricature artist’s image of the object. The created caricature
corresponds with the imitation, and the annihilation corresponds with the caricature itself
and its separation from the actual object. Baudelaire’s writings about malevolent laughter
produced by the caricature are especially significant for understanding Shakespeare’s
dramatic representations of this link between comedy and cruelty. For example, the
power-upsurge represented in Hamlet represents this relationship of Girard’s descriptions
of the mimetic desire for annihilation and Baudelaire’s notions of the malevolence of
laughter.
Baudelaire’s argument about laughter at a caricature is especially significant when
analyzed alongside Girard’s sense of the philosophic significance of the desire for the
mimetic, for “caricature is a double thing; it is both drawing and idea-the drawing violent,
the idea caustic and veiled” (Baudelaire 151), much in the same way in which the
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simultaneous yet paradoxical desire for imitation and the desire for annihilation are
continuously linked in the mind of the individual participating in the mimetic process.
The caricature operates nearly identically to the mimetic desire: the idea remains “veiled”
(Baudelaire 151) as a secret desire to become the other, situated in the mind of the
desiring subject, while the violent drawing corresponds directly to the imitative process,
in which the desiring subject attempts to take up the being and habits of the desired other,
in order to become the other. Baudelaire believes that analyzing the caricature “from the
artistic point of view, the comic is an imitation” (Baudelaire 157), revealing the mimetic
element that is found in humor, particularly the sinister nature of the comedy of the
caricature. The laughter that the caricature produces is “the expression of a double, or
contradictory, feeling; and that is the reason why a convulsion occurs” (Baudelaire 156),
because although the individual may laugh at a humorous caricature, the laughter
produced is not necessarily an expression of an irrepressible enthusiasm, but rather a
problematic feeling in which the individual is unable to distinguish one distinct emotion.
The darkness of humor is a process of this doubling of two separate feelings toward the
caricature, resulting from the conflict between righteous goodness and a figure of evil
that is present in comedy.
For Baudelaire, the origin of laughter is based on human feelings of advantage
over other individuals, branching from pride. Ultimately, this locus of laughter reveals its
truly sinister nature, which Baudelaire argues is a reaction to the failing of another
individual, a person affected by the biblical fall, and gives the observer, another fallen
person too, a smug sense of superiority. For example, an individual tripping on the
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walkway can often elicit laughter from those individuals in close proximity to the event.
However, this laughter reveals the cruelty found in human nature, that seems to take
delight in the suffering of others, and that “it is certain that if you care to explore this
situation, you will find a certain unconscious pride at the core of the laughter’s thought”
(Baudelaire 152) in a scenario such as the laughter based on another’s failings. To
Baudelaire, comedy is typically based on the failures of others, in which the laughing
individuals simply find a sense of relief that it is not they who have failed, and further
increases these feelings of pride.
However, even though laughter is so closely linked with evil, Baudelaire asserts
that “since laughter is essentially human, it is in fact, essentially contradictory”
(Baudelaire 153), noting its complex relationship with humanity. The more a person
laughs, the closer he or she is related to laughter, but at the same time, the individual
becomes closer to the holy. Even though Baudelaire seems to be condemning of laughter,
his argument is much more complex, and in face he believes that “it is with his tears that
man washes the afflictions of man, and that it is with his laughter that sometimes he
soothes and calms his heart, for the phenomena engendered by the fall will become the
means of redemption” (Baudelaire 150), because although malicious laughter, such as
laughing at the caricature, demonstrates the sinister nature of comedy, the act of laughing
is solely human and thus, can be a source of developing feelings of community. The
individuals that laugh together can feel a kinship toward one another, and eventually,
develop this communal relationship toward the holy. “There are different varieties of
laughter…many sights which provoke our laughter are perfectly innocent; not only the
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amusements of childhood, but even many of the things that tickle the palate of artists
have nothing to do with the spirit of Satan” (Baudelaire 156), and indeed, for Baudelaire,
the reasons for laughter are not found in a unilateral mode of categorization, but through
further close analysis. However, the laughter present in Twelfth Night seems to be very
closely related to the sinister nature found in the comedy of the caricatures that
Baudelaire describes. With this frame to imagine the humor found in the play,
Baudelaire’s notions of laughter can help us to gain a richer understanding of the
relationship between cruelty and laughter in Twelfth Night, especially the Malvoliobaiting subplot.
Baudelaire’s “On the Essence of Laughter” provides an ideal framework in order
to begin examining the violence that is present in the moments of comedy in Twelfth
Night, and this paper seeks to consider the ways in which Shakespeare’s dark comedy
offers a dramatic representation of the relationship between cruelty and laughter.
Although Twelfth Night contains a multitude of scenes in which Shakespeare casts
characters against one another as they circulate a violent energy from individual
characters to others, I believe that the malevolent laughter problematizes the entire text.
The comedy within the play captures the sinister laugh that Baudelaire is so interested in
analyzing in his text “On the Essence of Laughter”. In particular, the Malvolio-baiting
subplot operates on the violence present in Girard’s theories of mimetic desires for
imitation and destruction of other individuals, as well as Baudelaire’s conclusions
concerned with the cruelty of laughter. However, there is malevolence throughout the
entire play that includes more than just the Malvolio-baiting scenes. I am interested in
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this comedy of the caricature that is present in Twelfth Night, but I am also curious as to
the importance of the reunion of the twins Viola and Sebastian, and why it is especially
important for the mimetic element of this play. To conclude this paper, I will analyze
how an understanding of the ways in which laughter and cruelty circulate through Twelfth
Night can provide a literary lens in which to better comprehend this relationship that
exists within human interactions.
Baudelaire believes that the laughter at another individual’s failures directly
originates from Satan because to laugh at a caricature is to revel in smug feelings of the
Satanic after the biblical Fall; the laugh is a product of the feeling of relief that the
individual laughing is not in the position of the one being laughed at over a failing. A
smug arrogance in the soul becomes transferred into a laugh at another, and this feeling
of pride in comparison to another failing individual is seductively sinister. This laugh is
actually the opposite of the mimetic, which is an assimilation of another self, while the
Satanic laugh is the denial of another self. The Malvolio-baiting subplot circulates this
laugh at the failings of others, and in particular, at Malvolio’s inability to recognize that
he becomes the butt of the joke; however, he is the character that originally starts the
process of circulating the malicious laughter of Twelfth Night. Early on in the play, Olivia
and Feste engage in a conversation about the ways in which Olivia mourns for her
brother’s death; as the clown figure of Twelfth Night, Feste is able to seemingly
effortlessly manipulate the speech of other characters of the play in order to produce
laughter at the silliness of that character. This laughter is a type of laughing at oneself, a
solace and healing an alternative to what Malvolio proposes; it therefore does not contain
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the maliciousness of the laughter at the caricature that Baudelaire describes because it is
not at the expense of another, which is inherently malicious. However, Malvolio enters
the scene and attempts to put down Feste, “I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a
barren rascal. I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more
brain than a stone…unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged” (1.5.7579), the smugness in Malvolio’s speech demonstrates his denial and refusal to see the
other characters, and he continues to speak down to those whom he perceives to be below
him and because of his obvious arrogance, Maria singles him out as the object of a joke
to gain revenge, which operates within a process of doubling. The Malvolio-baiting is
designed to humble the arrogant servant into his proper social order; because he feels a
sense of superiority over others, other characters use the joke against him in order to find
something related to Malvolio to laugh at. The design of the joke is to reverse Malvolio’s
perceived social order in which he places himself above Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew,
and Feste. The anticipated outcome of the joke would be a humbler Malvolio and a
metaphorical change in the social structure of the household, in which he resigns himself
to a position lower than those he had previously imagined to be lower than himself. The
Malvolio-baiting reflects Baudelaire’s connection between laughter and cruelty.
Malvolio’s snide comments to the other household members of Twelfth Night
reflect his own feelings of superiority over them, whether they are his social equals, such
as Maria, or his social superiors, such as Sir Toby or Sir Andrew. His sense of superiority
is rooted in his abstemious avoidance of participating in the type of the revelry he
observes the other characters partaking in, and talks down to them, especially to his
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fellow servant, Maria. When he catches Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew enjoying
revelry for the holiday Epiphany, Malvolio speaks to Maria and chastises her, “Mistress
Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at any thing more than contempt, you would not
give means for this uncivil rule: she shall know of it, by this hand” (2.3.108-110.) and
threatens the members of the party that he would go to inform Olivia as to the lack of
decorum of the revelers. His disgust at their celebration reveals his contempt for the
individuals that he believes to be less than him, but although Malvolio acts the
stereotypically Orthodox part of a rigid Puritan, his self-righteous arrogance eventually
causes him to become the butt of the joke for the play. However, Malvolio represents this
similar feeling of superiority, and because the other characters recognize his supremacy,
they plan a joke in order to subvert Malvolio’s individually fashioned social structure in
which he is at the top while characters such as Maria, Sir Toby, or Feste are below him in
position.
The Malvolio-baiting joke was purposefully designed in order to humble him, and
the conspirators are successful in bringing Malvolio down to the level that he must
remain: the position of a servant. However, the joke induces a type of a malicious sense
of humor that is so important in the framework of Baudelaire’s proposal about the
relationship between laughter and cruelty, and indeed, the Malvolio-baiting joke
demonstrates the significance of the evil found within laughter. Although the sight of the
clown of Twelfth Night dressing as a priest would undeniably be a humorous spectacle,
much of the Malvolio-baiting subplot is completely invested in the type of cruelty that
accompanies the malicious laugh, a feeling of supremacy of one fallen individual taking
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pleasure in the failings of another. This malicious laugh leverages the individual laughing
in a similar way to Malvolio’s perceived feelings of dominance over the other characters,
and the hoped-for result of the Malvolio-baiting joke. Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir
Andrew strategically planned out their scheme to appeal to Malvolio’s desires in order to
more effectively humiliate him, and through their cruelty, they, along with the audience,
laugh at Malvolio’s gullibility to believe the letter and follow the ridiculous directions
found in it. This laughter at Malvolio’s gullibility represents the link that Baudelaire
describes that operates within the relationship between cruelty and laughter.
Because of this malevolent laughter present in Twelfth Night, the characters
playing the joke on Malvolio, such as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, reveal the
circulation of these feelings of conceit, and in the case of the Malvolio-baiting, the group
of tricksters propel Malvolio’s superiority back to themselves. The locus of Malvolio’s
arrogance is in his speech and the language that he uses when he speaks to other
characters; however, as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew play the joke on
Malvolio, the sense of certain individuals’ over dominion others simply changes shape.
The Malvolio-baiting scenes simply initiate a change in the manifestations of the
individual characters’ pride become reversed onto Malvolio and the form of the
demonstration of power changes from the language to the laugh. In Twelfth Night, the
joke on Malvolio produces the malevolent laugh that Baudelaire describes: the tricksters
playing the joke on Malvolio and the audience members who laugh at the scenes in which
Malvolio believes the letter to be from Olivia, and when Feste performs a fake exorcism
is a reaction of relief from those individuals that laugh. This relief comes from the pride
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of the fallen individual, and that although they frequently do fail, at least their failure is
not as ridiculous as the butt of the joke, and in the case of Twelfth Night, the audience
members and tricksters alike laugh because they are relieved that they are not as gullible
as Malvolio. This malevolent laugh takes delight in the failings of others, but not out of a
true vindictiveness in relishing the pain of others, however, the malevolent laugh does
serve its purpose to validate the feelings of conceit at the individual level.
Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, as well as the audience reading or
watching the play, may take some delight in the Malvolio-baiting subplot, because there
is a humorous element to a successful practical joke, especially if the butt of that joke is
an arrogant individual. Malvolio is an ideal object to become the butt of a practical joke
because of his haughty attitude, and for this, they circulate this energy of superiority back
onto him, and the joke does elicit laughter in the characters and audience alike. However,
this laughter brings with it a sense of advantage over the idiot who falls for the trick and
is easily manipulated, because it means that it is another individual that is the gullible
moron. But, because of the cruel laughter present in the Malvolio-baiting subplot, the
feelings of pride never really leave the plotline of the play; instead, they only change their
sites within the play from Malvolio’s haughty speech to the laughter of the tricksters and
the audience alike at Malvolio’s moronic gullibility. The Malvolio-baiting subplot works
for the trickster characters to power over Malvolio, however, they gain an edge of
supremacy in a similar manner over Malvolio, in the sense that it only exists in their own
minds and not actually in a real shift in the social schema. This feeling of dominance that
dominates much of the play’s plotline is not a literal higher position, but rather an
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imagined domination of others. However, as Baudelaire describes, this laughter is
especially vile because it contains a sort of pleasure in one fallen individual at the
expense of another fallen person, and therefore, contributes to a sense of pride over the
gullible character who becomes the butt of the joke. The cruelty found in Twelfth Night is
this same malicious laughter that Baudelaire describes that is particularly disturbing
about the laughter at the caricature. Within the plotline Twelfth Night there is a sinister
shadow that enshrouds the play that is supposed to be a light, silly romp with crossdressing twin confusion, a clown with a quick sense of humor, and the general joviality
found in the holiday time of Epiphany, the original twelfth night celebration. However,
readers and audience members become the witnesses and participants to a kind of
malicious laughter, and instead of taking a pure delight in the comedy of the play,
instead, experience mixed emotions at the absurdity and simultaneous cruelty of the play.
Because of its dual-nature, Twelfth Night is an especially important Shakespearian text in
which to observe some of the distinctly human aspects of the doubled nature of human
experience, alternating between cruelty and laughter that at first glance seem separate but
occur and inform together. I believe that the genius of both Twelfth Night and
Shakespeare’s works in general, is this single author’s ability to so accurately dramatize
the human experience. Girard claims that there is this tension in human culture already,
and Shakespeare further thematizes the cruelty present in laughter and human
interactions.
Additionally, the cruelty present in Twelfth Night is not only contained to the
scenes that comprise the Malvolio-baiting subplot, but there is a certain amount of
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maliciousness in other interactions between the characters of the play. For example, in
the last scene of the play when the reunion of the two twins takes place, Sebastian turns
his affection toward Antonio into a near apathy. Earlier in the play, when Antonio finds
Sebastian walking through Illyria after the shipwreck, he quickly helps Sebastian to
recuperate after the accident. However, despite the homosocial bonding that takes place
between the two men, once the twins’ reunion takes place in the final scene, Sebastian
casts aside the man who had helped him after the shipwreck. Dejected by the one he
loves, Antonio is cast aside in a final cruelty in the last scene of the play. In this play,
when a character is done with using another for their individual purpose (whether it is for
a joke or for earnest help), that character is often quickly dismissed.
However, this final scene does serve as a moment of closure for the malevolence
of Twelfth Night, and through the reunion of the twins, the play ends with a satisfying
conclusion. Although much of the plotline of the play is a dramatic representation of the
power plays that arise out of the mimetic desires to imitate and annihilate, the presence of
both twins onstage serves as a powerful image of a created unity that must occur to
cancel out the division caused by mimetic desires and the malicious laugh. I believe that
the onstage reunion of both of the twins serves to correct both the problems of
malevolence and laughter at the caricature that cause the problems of the cruel humor in
this Shakespearian problem play. Because they appear to look so similar to one another,
Viola and Sebastian serve as one another’s mimetic double, a human representation of the
imitation found in their likeness. Upon seeing the twins together, Olivia exclaims, “One
face, one voice, one habit, and two persons! A natural perspective, that is and is not!”
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(5.1.206-207), reflecting the uncanny experience of observing the identical appearances
of both Viola and Sebastian as they stand onstage for the first time in the play. At the
same time that the twins’ doubled appearance seems to be natural, it is simultaneously
aberrant, and leaves the other characters, such as Olivia, left to muse about their relation
to one another because they are individual people, yet appear to be the same person. This
human representation of the uncanny, no matter how peculiar it may seem to be, serves as
a moment of redemption of the cruelty that is in Twelfth Night. First, in a fairy-tale-esque
moment, the siblings are brought together so they may achieve their previous familial
closeness once more, and will not have to play a part to guarantee their safety in a strange
land. Additionally, because the twins are a human representation of doubling brought
together, they symbolize the unity that doubling so desires to culminate toward as a final
target of the mimetic process. The nature of the doubled is a self-cognizant awareness of
the separateness of its duality that consistently desire a unity; Sebastian and Viola
onstage are the human depiction of this process. In order to resolve the disjointed nature
of the doubled object, the individual producing this doubling must reconcile the two
separate entities, and in the case of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare reconciles the doubling
that is so present earlier in the play in the form of the cruel laughter and desires present in
the play’s characters to annihilate the other with this final scene with the twins’ fulfilling
reunion.
I believe that the play also serves as a metacritique of its own awareness toward
doubling and its significance for both Girard’s and Baudelaire’s writings that have
influenced this paper so much, and even the entire title of the play, Twelfth Night: or
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What You Will, can serve as a lens in which to examine this claim. The subtitle includes a
pun based on the doubling of the author’s first name, William Shakespeare, and serves as
a reminder of the continual literary presence of an author in his or her own written text.
Although audiences and readers alike may become engrossed by the plotline of a literary
work, the author’s existence is never out of sight or out of mind, because the literary
work’s world is a mimetic creation of the author’s imagination, doubled in the written
language of the text. In order to create a literary text, the author must partake in an act of
mimetic imitation to navigate his or her own thoughts and translate them into the
organized language that the written word requires; the writer’s creation is a culmination
of verbal mimesis. In the case of this play’s subtitle, with the reminder of William
Shakespeare’s name, presence, and his own imitative ability to translate his own thoughts
into words, serves a constant reminder to the audiences as to his abilities to successfully
create his own construction of a world completely of his own. The reunion of the twins
by the play’s conclusion represents the significance of the theatrical text, a further
mimetic process in which actors imitate the words of the author, which are an example of
authorial imitation themselves. The twins, as well as Malvolio, symbolize the importance
of identification in theatre, as it is through this connection between the events in the play
and drama as a genre that audiences may appreciate the mimetic nature of both the
theatre and human interactions. Twelfth Night serves to offer an exploration of a major
aspect of the human experience: as individuals, we view others depending on our
similitude and likeness with one another, and through the process of mimetic desire, we
imitate that which we desire in others. The process of identification with others is crucial
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for an understanding of the significance of Girard’s writings about mimetic desires,
because there must be some qualities of the desired other that we can identify with so that
we may first begin to desire; however, there must be a certain degree of difference
between the desiring subject and the desired object so there may be something different
in the other for the subject to imitate. In these similarities and differences between others,
individuals develop a sense of self, and through the differences, Baudelaire’s writings
about the malicious laugh connect with Girard’s theses about mimetic desire. It is within
the differences between individuals that the malicious laugh occurs, as the individual
laughs at the caricature because he or she is grateful to be different than the caricature.
To conclude this paper and its study of the importance of the doubled, I wish to
consider Jacques Derrida’s infamous text “White Mythology” and the ways in which he
describes the significance of doubling in human language. Derrida’s thesis is about the
failure of language and its inherent conflict that arises out of its doubled nature; the
problem of language, whether in a Shakespeare play or in daily interactions with other
individuals is that the nature of language is its existence that can only be present through
the extended use of metaphor. Although philosophers such as Saint Augustine have
argued that the name of an object directly corresponds with the object itself, as Derrida
points out, all language is metaphor and the name of the object has nothing to do with the
object named. The name serves only as a metaphor for the object, because there is no
system in which the name directly corresponds with an object. However, the belief of the
connectedness between the object and its name continues to perpetuate it, but because
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language is inherently metaphorical, there is no escape from the doubling that must occur
in language for it to continue.
As Derrida describes, language is always a twin to itself, as the name exists side
by side with the object that is named by the utterance of the word. However, informed by
Girard’s writings about the significance of doubling within the mimetic desires of each
individual, the act of imitation that produces the double also produces a desire to destroy,
and as with the mimetic process, language also destroys. The destruction by language
occurs as the speaker tears apart the inherent difference between the word and the object,
metaphorically destroying the bond between the verbal twins of the name and the object;
twins may look alike, such as Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, but they will never be
the same. Similar to the physical relationship of twins, in language, the name and the
object itself can never be the same, and Derrida describes this process as a type of
coming apart of language, and the twin that dominates is the word itself. Girard’s thesis
about the mimetic desires to imitate and destroy is not only reflected in human
interactions but the medium in which they take place; not only do individual people
participate in this circulation of imitation and annihilation, but the speech individuals use
is a reflection of this violence. Mimetic desire and violence are present everywhere, and
therefore are inescapable. Through the malicious laughter and the mimetic violence that
take place in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare transfers this mimetic energy from the daily
interactions of individual people to a stage setting. Because of the circulation of mimetic
desires to imitate and destroy, Twelfth Night is an ideal framework in which to observe
this human interface.
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