Twelfth Night Part Deux: The Revenge of Malvolio and Antonio
Or, The Day Shakespeare Turned In His Grave

M. Alford, English 112, PVCC, 07/08 Grade: A+

Feeling themselves tricked by the houses of Olivia and Orsino, Antonio and Malvolio join forces.

Act V, Scene II. [Streets of Illyria.]

Enter Antonio, rumpled and ragged from being briefly arrested.

Antonio. Woe is me! Look well all you happy revelers! Tis all good and well for you to make merry on the feast of our Lord. Stoke the embers of love in your hearts! As for me, my heart is burnt and black. Alas Sebastian! You have left me pillaged, sure as a ship by a pirate savaged. At the close of the day you abandoned me, as rats discard a vessel, only to be drown’d at sea. I am in such straits as those who began on this unhappy holiday!

Enter Malvolio.

Malvolio. Halt, you pirate! How come you here? Did I not see you in arrest but a moment ere?

Ant. Aye, a brief arrest indeed. So drunkened by love are the members of that household; they have all misplaced me. Yet I am imprisoned still. My spirit is brought so low by that Janus; that duplicitous Sebastian, that I might well be fettered a thousand fathoms below the earth.

Mal. Even one as low as you knows higher esteem than I. You see before you a man scorned by his household, that he has served faithfully many a year. My love for the lady Olivia is snuffed out in its infancy. Ere did I even know I had a love for her, before it was gone! Nay—a fiction scribed by the wretches of that house, who make so merry now! Look on me! I am in disgrace, cross-gartered, looking ever a fool. Is there any man more pathetic than I?

Ant. Aye! Myself, none other. We are a pair of perfect fools, sir.

Mal. See how we are discarded. They do not esteem even you, their criminal. They cast you aside as the very rubbish from dogs’ plates. They possess not even the common sinew of reason to convict your piracy! Too full of love and pettings; they have all but archived me. I-- who played their gull supreme not a half hour ere!

Ant. To be despised so roundly is to be kissed so fondly. To be dismissed so firm is to be killed, I affirm.

Mal. I will not be disposed so neat, from this den of liars. We have a righteous grievance against every member of that merged clan of scoundrels!

Ant. I hear your lament, but grasp not your intent.

Mal. And they would try thee as a pirate! You more than any might have a library of treacherous acts to draw from! Where is thy cutlass, knave? Where is that which incensed the household of Orsino against you?

Ant. I am every measure of man you are sir; more, since I have not concealed the identity of he who stewards my heart!

Mal. I discern you make a mockery of my former station. You seek to mock one who is dead of mocking; I am too much a casualty to be stung any longer.

Ant. We have more in common. I too am dead, expired to the mere trivialities of those who would cry mercy, sympathy, sentiment. I am but a shadow to he whom I delivered; therefore my compassion is but a shadow.

Mal. Will you expend phantom mercy on one for whom you may as well be a corpse?

Ant. If I heard a remedy for the state in which I was, I would execute its advice.
Barring; if I were sold an avenue from Hades, I would pay any price.

Mal. I know of such a remedy. We need to confer,
Of a deliverance from our twin banished state.

Ant. I will defer,
And I’ll thank you to never mention twins from this date.
What would you have?

Mal. I see a path for us, particularly of irony,
As those who have blasphemed our love should suffer as mightily.

Ant. I hear.

Mal. Perchance you were to mask yourself, as that foul Sebastian masked his truth;
And you had a path into the revered house.
Perchance you were to take thy loved one’s station;
And creep in as a mouse. My eyes
See you not dissimilar to that which you love
As is often the case with love so devoted.

Ant. I hear,
And I obey, tho I think you have less sympathy for me
Than for your own plight.

Mal. You fear
my motive is selfish, purely?

Ant. I might.

Mal. And I may suspect you lacking in your motive as well.
Being the vagabond professional.
Therefore you be the master, I shall employ your knowledge
Against those who have caused us damage!

Ant. I see your path sir,
And I fear it; notwithstanding,
I see no other place in this world for me.
You are my partner, and also my master.

[Together]
We are the perfect asses
We suffer no ignorance to us,
We find abhorrent to us,
Those who would condescend us!

[End]