Page:The Psychology of Shakespeare.pdf/269

252 “He has been yonder in the sun practising behaviour to his own shadow this half hour.

Observe him for the love of

mockery, for I know that this letter will make a contem

plative idiot of him.” Malvolio's egregious vanity expressed in his overheard soliloquy is so preposterously flagrant, that it scarcely needed the dish of poison dressed for him in the feigned letter from the Countess, to bring it to a climax so closely resembling

madness, that Olivia should accept the fact, without further proof than the absurd demeanour which the poor “baffled fool” puts on before her : “Mal. 'Tis but fortune; all is fortune. Maria once told me, she did affect me : and I have heard herself come thus

near, that, should she fancy, it should be one of my com plexion. Besides, she uses me with a more exalted respect, than any one else that follows her.

What should I think

on’t 2"

The steward's conceit has not the common quality of good nature to redeem it. He is testy and quarrelsome among his fellow servants, and a willing tell-tale of their failings, an ill-disposed sheep-dog of the domestic flock, a “niggardly rascally sheep-biter,” as Sir Toby calls him. He is a man who has no pity for others, having himself put into prison the captain who rescued Viola, for some unspecified offence. His adhesion to Olivia is founded upon selfishness alone. He not only displays no real affection for her, not even that of a faithful servant, but from the first he treats her with that off-handed

upper-servant want of respect, which seems to say that she is honoured by his service. The folly of his aspiration to her hand has not therefore a breath of excuse or palliation. He can love no one but himself, and the demeanour, which he

puts on in consequence of Maria's letter, is but the expression of his own previous thoughts and aspirations. He dons himself in yellow stockings, a colour which Olivia abhors, cross garters himself, a fashion she detests, and presents