A Clown in the Dark House: Reclaiming the Humor in Malvolio’s Downfall

Abstract

In his User’s Guide to William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Michael Pennington epitomizes a common modern-day interpretation of Malvolio’s “dark house” interrogation during act 4:

Feste now applies his resources to making Malvolio wish he were dead. Punishing him . . . he repaints rather as might Edvard Munch or Lewis Carroll, familiar figures in a terrifying light—the pastoral cleric as bloodsucker, the innocent fool as mental defective, between them making the man of some honor gibber. . . .By the time Feste is finished with him, all he really doubts is his ability to survive.¹