(It is best to read The Introduction and Parts One, Two and Three first)
GREATNESS THRUST UPON THEM…
As Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know, Malvolio is the Countess Olivia’s steward..
Sir Henry Irving as Malvolio.
In a big household like Olivia’s – more like a small town than a house – the steward’s job was of tremendous importance, even more so as Olivia’s brother has unexpectedly died.
William Shakespeare would have seen, at first hand, the pressures on a single woman running a big household at Titchfield. …
'Reconstruction' of Place House, Titchfield
The Countess of Southampton’s husband had died in 1581, so when Shakespeare was ‘adopted’ by her (in 1590) Countess Mary would have been in charge there for nearly a decade…
A single woman, with power and money, is always a target for an unscrupulous man…
Malvolio is one of these. He has come from ‘nowhere’, his ambition is endless and he’s ‘in it’ for himself alone….
He wants control over the whole household, to destroy Sir Toby and Feste and marry the beautiful Countess Olivia.
Like the other ‘Puritan’ in Shakespeare, Angelo (in Measure for Measure) Malvolio has a massive, repressed sex-drive. It is, we learn in the play, his fantasy to share a ‘day-bed’ with Olivia where he could leave her sleeping after day-time sex….
Then, whilst waiting to reprimand his ‘cousin Toby’ he could…
frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch , or play with my – some rich jewel….
(‘Jewel’, as Brothers and Sisters of The Code well know, could also have the same phallic association that the phrase ‘Crown Jewels’ has today)
The brilliant Maria sums Malvolio up as…
a time-pleaser, an affectioned ass, that cons state without book, and utters it by great swarths: the best persuaded of himself so crammed (as he thinks) with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him…
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The parallels between Olivia’s rule of her household and Queen Elizabeth’s of England are, The Shakespeare Code believes, obvious. It was the unexpected deaths of her half-brother (King Edward) and half-sister (Queen [‘Bloody’] Mary) that brought Elizabeth to the throne.
After the death of Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester in Armada year (1588) there was a power vacuum at the court.
Queen Elizabeth's Armada Portrait (1588)
Men who wanted that power had to woo Elizabeth. Mostly they came from established families, but they all had one thing in common….
No wealth of their own.
Even Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex (Leicester’s stepson) was penniless after the Queen had called back her loans to Leicester from Essex’s mother, the hated Lettice.
Elizabeth adopted, as so many ‘tyrants’ have done, a policy of ‘divide and rule’. Whoever, for example, was first with news at the Court had the upper hand – so all the ambitious coutiers developed spy networks throughout Europe. At their own expence, of course….
Elizabeth got a thrill from seeing young men fighting – often literally – for her favour. They might form temporary alliances with one another – but their basic desire was to eliminate rivals to gain her attention. And if money and wealth meant sleeping with the ageing Queen – who by then had no fear of conceiving a child – they were prepared to pay the price.
By 1601 (the year of Twelfth Night) Essex had lost out in the struggle. Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Walter Raleigh (in an unholy alliance) had set him up to fail.
They persuaded a reluctant Queen Elizabeth to send him to Ireland to fight the ‘rebel’ leader, Tyrone, a job for which he was completely unsuited. He was gallant and brave on short campaigns, but a piece of sustained warfare was beyond his volatile, romantic nature.
Essex preparing to joust.
Essex, to crush the negative whispers against him at the Court, had left Ireland without the Queen’s permission. He had rushed, unannounced, into her morning chamber.
Before she’d had time to put on her wig or make-up…
Cecil and Raleigh made sure he was never to be forgiven.
Essex and Southampton wanted to kill these two ‘caterpillars’: but many of Essex’s followers, including Shakespeare, favoured appeasement.
When Sir Toby learns that Malvolio wants to sleep with his niece, Countess Olivia, his first thought is violence. But Maria convinces him that to make Malvolio a laughing-stock is a far more powerful option.
This idea was in the minds of Shakespeare and Nashe when they re-wrote What you Will. Let the Court audience laugh at ‘the caterpillars’ and their influence over the Queen will cease…
Sir Robert Cecil was small and round-shouldered….
Sir Robert Cecil
….. but had his share of sexual triumphs, including the Countess of Pembroke…
A contemporary lampoon went…
Robert Cecil, Robert Cecil
All back and all pistle….
…..Queen Elizabeth, though, was not one of Sir Robert’s triumphs.
The man in the sites of Shakespeare and Nashe, when they created Malvolio, was…….
Sir Walter Raleigh
(pronounced ‘Rawley’)
The Code believes Raleigh is the model for Malvolio because:
1. Raleigh claimed, in private conversation, he was the lover of the Queen…
Francis Osborn, who was 10 years old when Elizabeth died, heard Sir Walter Raleigh say….
That minions were not so happy as vulgar judgements thought them, being frequently commanded to uncomely and sometimes unnatural imployments.
Osborn indicates that the Queen’s ‘amorous caresses’, by ‘age and a unversal distribution’ had become ‘tedious if not loathsome…‘
Sir Walter, rather like Malvolio, seems to have had ‘greatness thrust upon him’ by the Queen.
2. Raleigh had a massive sex-drive. According to John Aubrey, he had ‘vertical’ sex against a tree with one of Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting…
who seemed at first boarding to be somewhat fearful of her honour, and modest, she cried ‘Sir Walter, what do you ask me? Will you undo me? Nay sweet, Sir Walter! Sweet Sir Walter! Sir Walter!’ At last as the danger and the pleasure at the same time grew higher, she cried in the ecstasy ‘Swisser Swatter Swisser Swatter…
As Captain of the Guard, Raleigh even had a key to the dormitory of the young ladies-in-waiting….
3. Raleigh was, according to Aubrey, ‘damnable proud’. (Olivia describes Malvolio as ‘sick of self-love’).
4. Raleigh was a personal enemy of the Earls of Essex and Southampton. So he was consequently the enemy of William Shakespeare.
He was also the enemy of Thomas Nashe who (with Shakespeare) had lampooned him as the figure of the penniless ‘Braggart’ in the 1592 version of Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Raleigh had promised Nashe money for a book he was writing, but in the end gave him nothing. Nashe launched a coded attack on ‘the upstart’, Raleigh in his pamphlet Pierce Pennilesse, by asking…
what reason have I to bestow any of my wit upon him that will bestow none of his wealth upon me? Alas it is easy for a goodly tall fellow [Raleigh was six feet] that shineth in his silks [Raleigh dressed to the nines] to come and outface a poor simple pedant in a threadbare cloak and tell him his book is pretty but at this time he is not provided for him…
- Nashe used Twelfth Night to dramatise his own clash with Raleigh in the confrontations between Feste and Malvolio. Also, by suggesting he was the ‘spirit’ of the Queen’s favourite jester, Tarleton…..
…..Nashe was obliquely referring to a famous incident earlier in Queen Elizabeth’s reign….
Edmund Bohun (1645-1699) writes:
Tarleton, who was then the best comedian in England had made a pleasant play – and when it was acted before the Queen, he pointed at Sir Walter Raleigh and said ‘See the Knave commands the Queen’. For which he was corrected by a frown from the Queen; yet he had all the confidence to add that he was of too much and too intolerable a power….
Nashe, playing Feste, is saying exactly the same thing about Raleigh to exactly the same person!
5. Raleigh wore flashy outfits to catch the eye of Queen Elizabeth.
Raleigh came from an old, but impoverished family (his father rented the family house); but from the beginning Raleigh wore expensive outfits to try to look rich. As Nashe points out..
the weaver’s looms first framed the web of his honour…
And Raleigh was prepared to sacrifice this ‘honour’ to gain more ‘honour’. As Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) reported in his Worthies….
Captain Raleigh found the Queen walking, till meeting with a plashy place, she seemed to scruple going thereon. Presently Raleigh, though his clothes were then a considerable part of his esate, cast and spread his new cloak on the ground; whereon the Queen trod gently, rewarding him afterwards with many suits…
Raliegh lays down his honour...
An essential part of Raleigh’s ensemble was a tall hat with a pearl band and a large, black-jewelled feather….
- Sir Walter Raleigh
Nashe tells us that Raleigh would…
sonnet a whole quire of paper in praise of Lady Swine-Snout, his yellow-faced Mistress, and wear a feather of her rain-beaten fan for a favour, like a fore-horse…
In older productions of Twelfth Night, Malvolio often wore ‘a tall hat with a large feather’ in the famous ‘letter-scene’ to make sense of Fabian’s line…
O peace, Contemplation makes a rare turkey-cock of him: how he jets under his advanced plumes….
6. Raleigh wore white ribbons in his shoes….
It’s difficult to tell who is more absurd, Malovolio with his yellow stockings and cross-gartering….
rSir or Sir Walter with his shoes studded with gems and white ribbons…
- Raleigh and Son…
Sir Walter Raleigh
Beerbohm Tree as Malvolio
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Philip II's flag
borne along on a sumptuous chariot formed like a throne, with four pillars supporting a canopy, and drawn by white horses. The streets through which she passed were hung with blue cloth, in honour doubtless of the navy, and the colours taken from the enemy were borne in triumph…
The Armada off Gravelines. Note the yellow streamers from the Spanish ships.
Thou [Raleigh]art the greatest Lucifer that ever lived. Nay I will prove all. Thou art a monster. Thou hast an English face but a Spanish heart.
I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you
The Shakespeare Code 
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