Malvolio – Twelfth Night
In Twelfth Night, Malvolio is the countess Olivia’s trusted steward, who is cruelly duped into thinking Olivia is in love with him and then ridiculed. Malvolio is perhaps the most solitary figure in the play, isolated from the other characters not only by his lower class status but also by his egotism. He exists as a walking affront to Twelfth Night’s omnipresent festive spirit, a morally censorious voice who criticises the “fools’ zanies” and the revellers’ “quaffing and drinking” but has no place in the romance plot either. From the beginning of the play, when he condemns Feste the clown as a “barren rascal” (Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 5), he taints the festive atmosphere with his “distempered appetite.”
Indeed, as a “kind of puritan,” Malvolio exists in opposition not only to festivity but to the theatre itself. In Shakespeare’s time, the Puritans were a group of English protestants who believed in a simpler, more regulated form of worship and opposed the theatre because of its perceived immoralities, including crossdressing on the stage. Critics debate whether Malvolio is a religious puritan or merely morally uptight, but in any case he has no place in the theatre.
Malvolio is also unlikeable because he is a hypocrite: he covets the aristocratic privilege he seems to criticise. By marrying Olivia, he hopes to elevate his social status to be above Sir Toby, yet he hates Toby for abusing his aristocratic privilege. While in a different context, the audience may sympathise with Malvolio’s attempts to quell the two knights’ rowdy wastrel-like behaviour, the theatre itself is a space of revelry and misrule with no place for the order that Malvolio tries to enforce. It is possible, then, to laugh at and mock Malvolio even as the prank played on him becomes more than a harmless game. When he puts on the infamous yellow stockings, he unconsciously mocks himself – a puritan performing the role of a virile young lover.
The dark house in which Malvolio is eventually imprisoned is a metaphor for his egotism; he is confined not merely by the physical walls but by his own arrogance, which means he cannot truly love or be loved. Malvolio parallels the Ovidian myth of Actaeon, a man caught spying on the goddess Diana who was then turned into a stag and torn apart by his own hounds, which is alluded to in the play’s opening monologue. Like Actaeon, Malvolio is an unwelcome unlooker who is then viciously set upon and it is no coincidence that his final line is “I’ll be revenged upon the whole pack of you!” (Twelfth Night, Act 5 Scene 1) Interestingly, this line implicitly condemns the audience as well as the pranksters: we too have been in on the joke and ridiculed him, therefore his revenges must also extend to us. This line is also a reminder of the strident presence of puritan anti-theatricalism which was threatening to silence the theatre while Shakespeare was alive and which eventually closed the theatres in 1642.
Lady Macbeth – Macbeth
Lady Macbeth is Macbeth’s wife who convinces him to murder King Duncan so he can assume the throne. As the play progresses, she is increasingly tormented by guilt and eventually commits suicide. Much like the mercurial and elusive witches, Lady Macbeth is a morally complex figure. She is the catalyst for the murder of Duncan, manipulating her husband to “look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it” and supporting him when he threatens to fall apart. When she utters the words “come you spirits” and urges the spirits to “unsex” her, she undergoes an almost mythological metamorphosis: from ordinary woman to something demonic, sexless, without a woman’s feelings or failings. Her utterance to spirits “come to my woman’s breasts / And take my milk for gall” (Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 5) implicitly associates motherhood with weakness; it is only by becoming a witch archetype that she can gain strength. Like the witches, Lady Macbeth aligns herself with darkness and “direst cruelty.” She parallels the myth of Medea, a witch who murdered her children, in her hypothetical willingness to “dash the brains [of her infant child] out.”
However, Lady Macbeth is more than merely a witch archetype. As a woman, albeit a strong and resourceful one, in a male-dominated world, she has no real power and when Macbeth shuts her out and murders Banquo without her knowledge, her taunting confidence begins to unravel. She has also lost a child and fails to provide an heir to Macbeth’s “fruitless crown,” making her a failure in the eyes of her patriarchal society. While the murder of Duncan is shocking to the audience, we cannot help but sympathise with her as she becomes more emotionally isolated from her husband and full of remorse for his victims.
By Act 5, Lady Macbeth has become a tragic, pitiable figure. She “has light by her continually” due to her childlike fear of the dark (Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 1) – a primal manifestation of her fear of hell and damnation. While she once sought courage in the “blanket of the dark,” she now shrinks from the domain of “secret, black and midnight hags,” horrified by what she has become. In her famous “out damned spot” soliloquy, smooth pentameter is replaced by halting prose, the flow disrupted by frequent rhetorical questions and exclamations. This not only gives the impression of a sleepwalker’s mutterings but of the rift that exists between her and her husband – she is asking questions and yet she has no one to answer them and no way to justify her power hungry malignancy. She feels particularly acute guilt at the murder of Lady Macduff, another woman and an innocent, pitifully asking “where is she now?”
Unlike the witches, Lady Macbeth does not entirely belong to the lawless world of the supernatural, she is rather a troubling hybrid of woman and witch. It is her humanity which ultimately extinguishes her life: she cannot reconcile herself with the destructive remorse that consumes her. This prompts Macbeth to meditate on the fragile and empty nature of human life in his famous “tomorrow” monologue (Macbeth, Act 5 Scene 5) – he finally realises that life is meaningless now that his actions have destroyed the woman he loved.
Iago – Othello
Iago is the central antagonist in Othello, who sadistically manipulates Othello into believing Desdemona, his wife, is unfaithful to him. From the beginning of the play, Iago is entirely evil, carefully plotting to “abuse Othello’s ear / that [Cassio] is too familiar with his wife” (Othello, Act 1 Scene 3) and noting that Othello, with his “free and open nature,” will be easily led. On the surface, he appears to have a legitimate reason for hating Othello – he believes Othello had an affair with his wife, Emilia. However, Iago remarks that “I know not if’t be true / But I, for mere suspicion in that kind / Will do as for surety” (Othello, Act 1 Scene 3) In other words, his suspicions are purely hypothetical and he makes a conscious decision to treat a rumour as fact to justify his “motiveless malignancy,” as the poet Coleridge labelled it.
Although the play begins with Cassio being promoted above Iago – an understandable cause for resentment, Iago has no real reason for what he does to Othello except for the darkness that exists within himself, an all-consuming desire to destroy.
Iago’s deep-seated misogyny provides an inner motive for his desire to devastate Othello’s marriage and his eventual killing of Emilia. In Act 2 Scene 1, he paints a picture of women as faithless and sexually deviant: he calls them “pictures out of doors, bells / in your parlours, wild-cats in your kitchens, saints in / your injuries, devils being offended, players in your / housewifery, and housewives in your beds.” In other words, Iago believes women to be duplicitous: the word “players” connotes not only deceitful play acting but also the idea of gambling. It is this misogynist trope of female infidelity which he uses to poison Othello against Desdemona.
As a genius and master manipulator, Iago easily slides into the role of the genial male friend – an honest man whom Othello can trust. Indeed, Othello remarks that “thou’rt full of love and honesty” (Othello, Act 3 Scene 3) even as Iago plants the seeds of suspicion in his mind, playing on his insecure feeling that Desdemona is too good for him. Later, Iago overtly mocks Othello, revelling in his own cunning, which allows him to abuse Othello’s overly trusting character. At one point, he claims that “I lay with Cassio lately... in his sleep I heard him say “sweet Desdemona, let us be wary, let us hide our loves” / And then, sir, would he gripe and wring my hand, cry “O sweet creature!” and then kiss me hard” (Othello, Act 3 Scene 3) – a story which is as absurd as it is false. However, Iago pretends ignorance of the gravity of what he has said, saying “Nay, this was but his dream,” as if it were almost trivial.
Iago is one of very few of Shakespeare’s characters for whom the audience has no sympathy. Even villainous characters like Macbeth show some remorse and humanity. Iago, on the other hand, is a nihilist, entirely in opposition to love, and without moral scruples.
Caliban – The Tempest
In The Tempest, Caliban is the disfigured, inhuman slave of the self-proclaimed ruler of the isle, Prospero. Enslaved as punishment for attempting to rape Prospero’s daughter Miranda, Caliban is introduced to the audience as a hideous, subhuman beast with no respect, morality, or conscience. He violently insults Miranda and Prospero upon their coming; “wicked dew... from unwholesome fen / Drop on you both... and blister you all o’er!” (Act 1 Scene 2).
At a surface level, Caliban is a character to be ridiculed and jeered at. A key comedic player in the farcical subplot, his angry desperation for revenge on Prospero is comically overlaid with the drunken antics of Stephano and Trinculo, a butler and court jester. As the audience swiftly learns, his murder plot is not a threat, but rather a source of entertainment to Prospero, who employs his magic to further dupe the trio.
Caliban is reduced to the absolute lowest social standing in the play – in kissing the feet of the clown Trinculo, he is the very Fool of the Fool. In this respect, the audience’s ridicule of him is tinged with pity. He is thoroughly and cruelly manipulated by the two drunkards, who deceive him into believing that Stephano “was the man i’th’moon” (Act 2 Scene 2), and then proceed to mock his naivety in believing such falsehoods: “a most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder of a poor drunkard” (Act 2 Scene 2).
Unlike the other spirits on the isle, and indeed unlike most supernatural characters in any of Shakespeare’s plays, a reader of the play is given a fair idea of the appearance of Caliban. Whilst of course different productions take liberties with their portrayals, a common thread runs through all – Caliban is distinctly male, earthy, notably corporeal, and almost (but not quite) human. This is a rather stark juxtaposition with the other spirits, particularly Ariel, who is ethereal, “airy,” and of ambiguous gender. It is this distinction from the other spirits that disadvantages Caliban. He has not the mystical powers and otherworldly elegance that win Prospero’s affection for Ariel; he is human enough to feel sexual urges towards Miranda, yet not so human as to be considered so by Prospero. This deficiency of humanity draws heavily from The Tempest’s Age of Discovery context: Shakespeare uses Caliban as the perfect metaphor for the native peoples of new colonies, obliging his audience to acknowledge not only that they believe such people to be slightly subhuman, but also that they use this belief to excuse their mistreatment.
This allusion to native peoples extends further; as the son of the late witch Sycorax, previous ruler of the island, Caliban has a far more substantial claim to its ownership than Prospero. In brief interludes from his brutish manner, the audience catches glimpses of his intimate familiarity with and deep appreciation of the island. He speaks of having shown Prospero “all the qualities o’th’isle... barren place and fertile” (Act 1 Scene 2), before being enslaved for the attempted assault. Despite his initial kind-heartedness towards Prospero, Prospero condemns him as “a devil, a born devil on whose nature / Nurture can never stick” (Act 4 Scene 1), illustrating his belief that Caliban’s attempted assault is not the result of an innocent misunderstanding of human customs, but rather stems from an incurably bestial nature – much like how native peoples were deemed ‘savages.’ Furthermore, Shakespeare implores his audience to see a different, more sensitive and innocent side of Caliban – in contrast to the drunken Stephano and Trinculo, who speak only in common prose, Caliban speaks in verse. Some of the most sensory, poignant lines in the entire play are attributed to Caliban; “be not afeared, the isle is full of noises / Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not” (Act 3 Scene 2). These lines demonstrate an emotional maturity that is not evident in Caliban’s conduct early in the play; as such, Shakespeare seeks to subvert his audience’s initial prejudice against this ‘savage beast.’
