12th Night
Posted April 6, 2010 
Comments(6)
Comments(6) 
Malvolio wearing yellow stocking in order to win Olivia’s love. I can’t imagine any men being so gullible. Men of today and in the past wouldn’t believe that dressing would win the love of their lives. Malvolio is a stewardess which means he has a high rank in Olivia family. His character is not believable. How could Malvolio be so foolish in order to believe the letter? Is this part suppose to be believable or are we just suppose to go with the flow and believe what Shakespeare writes?
I know I would not dress like him for love, but maybe that’s just me.
I think that as the audience we are suppose to go along with what Shakespeare writes in order to understand the play. I also agree that Malvolio’s character is not believable because he falls for this prank to quicly without questioning anything. I am a bit confused about the reason for Maria, Fabian and Sir Toby Belch disliking Malvolio so much, or are they only having fun by torturing him for their own entertainment.
For me, that Malvolio would have done the things in the letter wasn’t so inconceivable. I think that some of the confusion regarding personal identity, that we see towards the end of the play, is actually a bit more challenging to overlook; some of it borders on absurd! Anyway, it seems that social class was often displayed in Early Modern England (social class seems to be relatively rigid); ways of showing one’s social class would have included language (Thou vs. You), living arrangements (castle vs. peasant house), possessions (having servants or maids), legal entitlements, or in this particular case, clothing (just look at the difference in the way that King Henry and his servants dress in comparison to the guys at the tavern!). So I think that doing stuff to impress people of higher classes was probably routine to those who wanted to get out of their own class in this time period. I think this whole idea of class is extremely important to Malvolio, especially, given his nature; when you add these things to a bit of romantic delusion, I could see someone (else) doing what he did. I also think the whole thing adds to the comedic element of the play also. Comedies are rarely about the more practical and believable situations in life, so I was able to suspend my expectations in order to digest the yellow socks. It is therefore not implausible to me that, given the context, Malvolio would have tried to change his clothing at the idea, foolish as the result may have been, of marrying Olivia. I think the situation relates back to the plot (identity) on some level as well.
I think a lot of it has to do with willing and wanting something to be true. Malvolia wanted Olivia to be in love with him and he arrived at that conclusion even though, to us, it seems slightly inconceivable. I’m guessing that Shakespeare was working to characterize Malvolio as love-struck and, therefore, not as likely to see the truth before his eyes. I think a big part of that becomes clear when Olivia, seeing the letter, immediately knows it is Maria’s handwriting, versus Malvolio who believes it is Olivia’a from the first look.
I believe that Shakespeare wrote some things in his plays that can’t seem to happen in real life in general. I know several things I’ve read, I’ve thought to myself “this can’t happen, why are these characters so gullible?!” But we need to look at the time period Shakespeare wrote back then. Perhaps society was that much different that maybe things like that did happen. Society is so different now that if we were to come to these situations, we would know what the obvious answer is. And after all, this is entertaining.
I think that Malvolio wearing yellow tights and doing everything in the letter is completely believable. How many of us wouldn’t change our personalities or appearance to gain the attention of someone we like just to have them like use back. It may not happen to us now but probably sometime in our life, especially when we were teenagers we would have wore those yellow tights or said we were interested in something just to get the persons attention.
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