LAUGHTER and LANGUAGE in SHAKESPEARE's TWELFTH NIGHT by Kaitlyn Joy Blum a Thesis Submitted To

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MADNESS AND MIMETIC VIOLENCE:

LAUGHTER AND LANGUAGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S TWELFTH NIGHT

Kaitlyn Joy Blum

A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of

The Wilkes Honors College

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

with a Concentration in English Literature

Wilkes Honors College of

Florida Atlantic University

Jupiter, Florida

May 2013

MADNESS AND MIMETIC VIOLENCE:

LAUGHTER AND LANGUAGE IN SHAKESPEARE’S TWELFTH NIGHT

Kaitlyn Joy Blum

This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Michael Harrawood, and has been approved by the members of her/his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences.

SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE:

______

Dr. Michael Harrawood

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Dr. Rachel Corr

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Dean Jeffrey Buller, Wilkes Honors College

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Date

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could never have done this project on my own, and must give many thanks to a multitude of superb individuals. First, I wish to say thank you to my family: to my mother, your never-ending support for me has always been my greatest source of encouragement; my father, for your words of wisdom; my brother Will for our true friendship with one another; my grandparents, for supporting my academic endeavors; my godparents for their kindness, especially during my college years. I want to thank the friends that I have met at the Honors College, especially my best friend Erica for your constant support and Dawn for your assistance in formatting this thesis. Additionally, I must thank several outstanding faculty members for being particularly important in my college career. Thank you to Dr. Rachel Corr, for being my second reader, and inspiring my interest in the study of anthropology. Thank you to Dr. Carmen Cañete-Quesada for teaching me Spanish, and believing in my abilities. Next, a big thank you to Dr. Miguel

Vázquez for simultaneously being one of the hardest and most influential teachers I have had at the Honors College; he taught me Don Quijote, and I must thank him profusely for that! Finally, I must thank Dr. Michael Harrawood for being the best academic advisor that a college student could ask for; I consider you to be both my English teacher and my life mentor, because you have taught me about literature and have been a true friend.

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ABSTRACT

Author: Kaitlyn Joy Blum

Title: Madness and Mimetic Violence: Laughter and Language in

Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Institution: Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Michael Harrawood

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences

Concentration: English Literature

Year: 2013

This thesis seeks to consider the malevolent humor of Shakespeare’s Twelfth

Night, particularly in light of the philosophical position that literary critic Rene Girard posits about what he refers to as mimetic desire. Girard contends that much of the basis of human interaction is the mediation between desires to imitate, and desires to annihilate. Using Girard’s critical writings as a frame of thought, I am interested in the circulation of cruelty in which the characters of this problem play interact with one another. American writer W.H. Auden claimed “Twelfth Night is one of Shakespeare’s unpleasant plays”, and this thesis addresses the relationship of laughter and cruelty in

Twelfth Night as the characters utilize comedy to negotiate between their simultaneous desires to imitate and destroy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE ...... 1

CHAPTER TWO ...... 18

CHAPTER THREE ...... 41

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 58

CHAPTER ONE

This paper seeks to consider the malevolent humor of Shakespeare’s Twelfth

Night and the problems present in this problem play. Malevolent humor often relies on an element of cruelty, typically at another person’s expense. While this category of comedy can often produce laughter, malevolent humor leaves a sense of aggression and violence in its wake. Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden described Twelfth Night as “one of

Shakespeare’s unpleasant plays. It is not a comedy for school children”, and I believe that

Auden cuts closer to the essence of the play than those individuals who perceive Twelfth

Night to be a light and entertaining romp. Although Twelfth Night appears to be primarily concerned with cross-dressing, identity confusion, and silly tricks, a shroud of darkness covers the play, as characters attempt to usurp one another and at times viciously tear one another down. Since the 1950’s, many literary critics have categorized

Twelfth Night to be one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, because it was labeled as a comedy in the 1623 Folio; yet contemporary opinions highlight the problematic nature of the play. The play is rife with violence and a cruel sense of humor. This paper argues that it is because of the presence of violence within Twelfth Night that the play successfully echoes a concern with the cruelty of laughter. Several moments of the play which seem to call out to the audience as being “comedy”, are in fact some of the darkest scenes of the play.

I will analyze the Malvolio-baiting scenes, as they are essential to understand the core essence of play, because these scenes include the moments in which Feste, Sir Toby

Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and Maria perform an elaborate trick on Malvolio, in an

1 attempt to humiliate the servant, who remains consistently fixated on the morality of others. These scenes are particularly crucial for understanding the cruelty and violence that occurs within the play, because Feste, Sir Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, and

Maria use Malvolio in order to stage an elaborate trick, in what seems to be (in their minds) that they are teaching the Puritan a lesson. Additionally, I am interested in the word-play that Feste the clown performs regularly, in a form of verbal performance and usurpation, especially when he speaks with Olivia and Viola. Feste operates in an interesting relationship with the other characters of the play, because his role is to perform the stereotypical fool, yet in reality, Feste remains the sharpest character onstage.

I will consider Feste’s role in relation to the imitation in which he partakes, especially as he is self-aware of performing the role of the fool, as he attempts to usurp the speech of other characters in order to make their words his own in grand imitative gestures and word play. Feste’s verbal usurpation is a perfect example of mimesis, and he is able to add comedy through his imitations of various characters. Additionally, this paper will consider the importance of the presence of the twins Viola and Sebastian, and the final goal of the play: the placement of both of the twins together on the stage at the same time. The twins’ presence is so important in considering what I will call the mimetic element present in Twelfth Night as the crux of the play is the way in which characters negotiate relationships by imitating one another. Viola and Sebastian are integral for the mimesis element because twins are human representations of mimesis, because they are separate individuals yet they appear to be the same, in what seems to be a display of imitation. Shakespeare is aware of their mimetic nature, and plays it up in several scenes

2 of the play, in which Viola is confused to be Sebastian, and vice versa. Shakespeare’s

Twelfth Night operates in a close relationship with mimetic violence as characters imitate one another in an attempt to enact that which they desire from other characters; the ultimate way to unlock the meaning and significance of the play is through an understanding of mimesis.

My sense of the play is that Shakespeare wrote Twelfth Night in order to dramatize certain aspects of the human experience, such as the imitation that individuals partake in, and the violence that branches out from mimetic desire, combined with the cruelty that often accompanies laughter. French literary critic Rene Girard has written extensively about frequent occurrences of mimesis, and the myriad of ways in which the individual develops his or her sense of selfhood through the act of imitation. Individuals negotiate between the sense of individuality and personal desire as they attempt to become the object of someone else’s desire.

The violence of the play reflects a sense of mimetic violence coupled with, and brought about by, doubling through imitation driven by desire; this violence is not necessarily the throwing of punches but rather, the cruel interactions of the characters.

Girard argues extensively about the violence that is simultaneous with desire, the drive toward imitation of others, and the subsequent doubling that occurs through the enactment of this mimetic violence. Girard’s A Theater of Envy posits his argument of the connection between mimetic desire and violence, with the intuitive knowledge of the human experience that Shakespeare possessed. In his book A Theater of Envy, Girard analyzes the mimetic nature of several plays by Shakespeare, including Twelfth Night,

3 and describes the essence of the play to be the circulation of mimetic desire. Additionally, in his book Violence and the Sacred he argues that people do act out their desires to become one another through imitation of others, which naturally produces violence. In his own way, through the use of the malevolent humor and mimetic violence that are essential components of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare has successfully dramatized this aspect of the human experience. My sense of the play is that Shakespeare’s purpose was to expose the cruelty that so often accompanies comedy, and the ways in which individuals negotiate their relationships with one other through mimetic desire and imitating the desired other. Through this circulation of mimetic desire and imitation of the other, individuals develop their sense of humanity. I believe that Shakespeare, aware of human mimetic desires, provides an opportunity in Twelfth Night in which to expose these desires, and attempts to negotiate between imitation and violence in human relationships.

Shakespeare and Girard were not the only ones who had invested imitation with a weight of importance; they inherited from ancient Greece an interest in the mimetic desires that exist in every individual. In his Poetics, Aristotle writes that imitation is one of the greatest pleasures that people can experience, as it is through copying others that people learn to be human. At the same time that people discover their humanity through a systematic doubling, they also begin to feel a sort of claustrophobia that simultaneously branches out from the desire for such impersonation. Aristotle’s viewpoints concerned with this conflict between two very human forces intersecting with the etymology and association made with the word mimesis. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the

4 word “mimesis” as having its origins in the ancient Greek word “μίμησις”and simply means “imitation”. Although the word has its original roots in Ancient Greece, mimesis and the systematic doubling and impersonation that is coupled with imitative desires are especially relevant for the argument posited by Girard, in the mid-twentieth century.

Girard is interested in the mimetic violence that he argues is an aspect of this shared experience of humankind, which has remained cognizant of its fallibility since the time of the Biblical Fall, creating a sense of anxiety in the individual, which leads to a desire to imitate others. By becoming someone else, the individual hopes to avoid the pain of his or her human weakness, and sense of failure.

In his book Violence and the Sacred, Girard argues that the presence of violence and desire are fundamental attributes of the human experience, and that they are negotiated through the act of mimesis. Mimesis is the systematic doubling in which the subject imitates the object because of the growing desire to become the other, through the circulation of mimetic violence. Through such desire and the impersonation that follows, violence takes place as the subject attempts to remove both the individual and the desired object in an act of usurpation, as the subject negotiates between this internal conflict to remain himself yet become the desired other. This violence and desire always come together as the subject attempts to enact his attempts at imitating the desired object. To

Girard, this system of impersonation is so essential to the human experience because people most actively learn through the process of imitating others. Through imitation individuals learn what it means to be human as the individual attempts to negotiate between his own desires and those that he perceives to be the desires of the other,

5 because mimesis operates in a very delicate balance between the individual’s desire and his or her perceptions of his desired object.

The desiring individual must consider the desires of the other in order to usurp the desired object’s position and become the other in a grand act of imitative usurpation.

When an individual sees others, a desire to become the other slowly begins to grow within the individual, operating under the belief that the other leads a fulfilled life that the individual does not have. Through strong feelings of desire and envy over the other’s satisfying life, the desiring individual attempts to imitate the desired object, in the hopes of gaining a happy life as well. Because the subject feels a sensation of immense loss and incompleteness in his or her own sense of human fallibility and assumes that the object of desire must not experience the same agony, he or she has a desire to become the other in an attempt to avoid anxieties. By becoming the other, the subject reasons that he or she will no longer experience such agony over human frailty, and in avoiding this anxiety, can begin to lead the happy life of the desired object. Motivated by such strong feelings of envy towards the desired object, the individual imitates the speech, manners, way of dressing, and various individual qualities of the other as he or she attempts to begin leading the life of the desired object. Through enacting this mimetic process, the individual assumes that by becoming like the other, this perceived happiness may finally be in reach.

Through the imitative process, the desiring individual begins to erase the line distinguishing the difference between becoming like the other and becoming the other, and actually attempts to be the other, as opposed to being like the other, which only

6 implies a similarity. Mimetic desire requires a full attempt to become the other, and although the process may appear to resemble a psychosis: this is the mode in which individuals learn and develop into members of their society. Through the strong desires for the life of the other, the subject must imaginatively destroy his or her object of desire to displace and eventually become that individual, in the effort to avoid the core pain and anxiety he or she attempts to avoid. The subject not only wants to become like the desired object, but by becoming the other, the desiring individual may avoid this agony over his or her own human weakness. The core of mimetic desire is avoiding the inevitable anxieties that accompany a fallen humanity. However, despite an individual’s best attempts to usurp and become the other, he or she falls short because all imitation is limiting, and continues to depend upon the person imitated, even as it desires that person’s annihilation. This ineffable relationship between violence, desire, and imitation continues, present in the arguments Girard posits in his book, Violence and the Sacred, as

Girard describes the cycle of violence that accompanies mimetic desire.

Girard writes that “the victim of this violence both adores and detests it. He strives to master it by means of a mimetic counter violence and measures his own stature in proportion to his failure…he must then turn to an even greater violence and seek out an obstacle that promises to be truly insurmountable” (Girard 148), in a continuous cycle of desire and violence, navigated through imitation. It is nearly impossible for an individual to separate himself or herself from the cycle, as it the mimetic desire remains a relentless drive within the individual, as it establishes a feeling of humanity, and thus truly becomes him or herself through attempting to become the other. Individuals begin to solidify their

7 personal sense of self as they take on the desired aspects of the other, and through such imitation, a greater self-image develops in the individual; it is through acting on this mimetic desire that they begin to embark on the journey to selfhood while taking on the qualities of the desired object in order to become themselves. One such example is in adopting the actions and the rhetoric of the desired, because it is through a shared language that people most often establish and experience a sense of simultaneously interconnected and individual humanity. The use of words, an organized grammar structure, and agreed-upon contexts creates individuals and humankind in general.

Through an established language, individuals are able to feel a sense of connection; in contrast, without language, individuals continue to feel in isolation. Consequently, rhetoric is a particularly remarkable aspect to study within the arguments of Girard, and his concerns with imitation, desire, and violence in the mimetic process are particularly relevant to the human experience. Language is a particularly ubiquitous site for mimesis to occur, because of the imitative nature of learning and speaking with others.

Language in particular serves as a fine example of the mimetic desire within the human being. People learn languages through the imitation of the authoritative other, and imitate those speech patterns, linguistic inflections, and rhetoric of the desired objects.

Because language is such a critical portion of what creates a sense of shared humanity, linguistic mimesis is an especially illustrative example of the importance of imitation. In order to become the other, the subject copies the speech of the desired object, the person he wishes to become through doubling that individual’s rhetoric. The strong desire within the subject causes an inevitable movement toward violence, as the desiring individual

8 usurps the language of the other, and takes that speech as his or her own through the mimetic process of imitation. Violence from this linguistic doubling begins in what was once the subject’s desire to become the other, as he or she kills within him or herself that which is singularly of the individual and that which is his desired object. The individual navigates this internal conflict as he or she establishes his or her identity through his usurpation of the other’s rhetoric, in order to avoid the pain experienced through the feeling of fallen humanity, in search of the fulfillment he or she suspects that the desired object experiences. The profundity of Girard’s argument about mimetic desire and violence is that it reveals we are individuals through membership with a social group.

Mimetic negotiations operate in a form of self-destruction as the desire leads itself towards conflict, because the subject must destroy that which stands in the way of his or her desire, and consequently must separate him or herself in order to become the desired other. Because the other does not conform to the desires of the subject, a metaphorical sacrifice must be performed to navigate between the attempts of the subject to become the desired object, and perceived desires of the actual object as an individual. There is a gap in understanding and perception between the object as his or her own individual self, and what the subject perceives him or her to be. Because the subject assumes that to become the desired other, the individual believes he or she will no longer be so acutely aware of his or her shortcomings as the individual often believes the other must not experience such anxieties. The subject navigates this conflict by doubling the rhetoric and actions of the desired object, in the hopes to eventually become as if he or she were the

9 desired other through the act of mimetic imitation, negotiated through the conflict that arises through attempts to become the other and finally escape from his anxieties.

Girard’s ideas concerning the human experience are particularly profound to examine the myriad of ways in which people conceive of their individuality, and the shared experience of being an individual person. However, Girard’s opinions of human communication are also especially relevant to the study of literature, because literature serves as an imitation of life itself, an idea originated by Aristotle in his Poetics. In this paper, I propose that William Shakespeare has written a play that is especially concerned with the human obsession with imitation and the violence that accompanies this obsession. The subject matter of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is interested in the doubling of the twin characters while the play serves as a literary object of Girard’s mimesis, because literature attempts to serve as a double to real life. Even the title of the play is evidence of the doubling nature of language: the “two” sound in twelfth, twin, and two produces a type of physical mimesis of the mouth, as the two lips pull apart as the individual speaks the words. Due to the presence of so many puns about doubling,

Shakespeare was purposeful in his handling of the subject of doubling in the play.

Through writing a play that is so concerned with a pair of twins, Shakespeare makes it clear that not only is Twelfth Night a dramatized representation of fictional twins, but due to the characters’ imitation and the play’s mimesis of reality, Shakespeare facilitates a larger connection between literature as the twin of life.

To claim that Twelfth Night is solely concerned with comic identity confusion between a boy and a girl, gender confusion and cross-dressing, clever courtly fools, and

10 capricious characters is to discredit all that Shakespeare has accomplished through writing this play. In order to fully appreciate all that Twelfth Night offers in order to better understand the human experience, it is useful to analyze the applicability of

Girard’s writings about mimetic desire, imitation, and the violence that occurs through these processes. Twelfth Night demonstrates to theatre audiences and readers the ways in which the acts of desire and violence that accompany mimesis are incredibly jarring.

Indeed, the beauty of Shakespeare’s writing is the fact that all of his works were written by a man, in his effort to imitate the world around him, and the actors’ attempts to successfully impersonate his characters so that the audience may think that the actors disappear and become the characters instead.

Shakespeare’s plays offer a noteworthy doubling found in the environment of the theatrical. The dramatic arts operate in a mimetic relationship, and particularly good theatre erases the distinctions between the actors and characters, so that audience members only see characters. Therefore, the actor must engage in a similar violent act of mimesis (which the sixteenth century called personation), in a movement toward enacting his desires to become the character, and this relationship actively found in theatre is another reason for studying Shakespeare’s plays. Although Girard does not mention the dramatic arts in his Violence and the Sacred, his arguments of the ineffable connection between mimesis, desire, and violence are particularly important for Shakespeare’s works: both in the written words on the pages of his works, and the performed final products because the actors enact mimetic violence to become the characters while the play serves as the doubled twin of reality. Following this mode of thinking, Shakespeare

11 is an ideal author in order to better understand Girard’s mimetic theories. Twelfth Night is especially relevant to Girard’s discussion about imitation, mimetic desire, and violence because it really cuts to the core of mimesis. In A Theater of Envy, Girard connects the play’s discussions concerned with self-usurpation, Olivia and Orsino’s narcissisms which mirror one another, the reflective doubling found in the twins of the play, and the violence present in the Malvolio-baiting scenes.

Girard makes his move in Violence and the Sacred in order to emphasize the relationship present between violence, desire and the imitation that is often ascribed to the mimetic desires of individuals. In Girard’s words, “the unchanneled mimetic impulse hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting desire…we have then, a self- perpetuating process constantly increasing in simplicity and fervor. By a mental shortcut that is…self-defeating, he convinces himself that the violence itself is the most distinctive attribute of this supreme goal! Ever afterward, violence and desire will be linked in his mind, and the presence of violence will invariably awaken desire” (Girard 148), setting up the inevitable association drawn between desire, mimesis, and the violence that frequently transpires. As people circulate the verbal reproductions created through the mimetic process, a certain power is ascribed to the speech of others because it is through the imitative usurpation of one another’s words that it is possible to become that which is desired, and verbal circulation of mimetic desire allows individuals to establish their own selfhood. Desire becomes an act of doubling as subjects negotiate their yearning to avoid the agony over their frail humanity by becoming the other by doubling the speech of the

12 desired other, and the sacrifice verbally occurs because the words of the individual no longer are present, and the rhetoric of the other is adopted.

It is the regular use of speech and language that renders individuals into the fully developed human beings that we conceive ourselves to be individuals. The ability to give a communicative response in order to describe conditions from within and to describe the external world lends itself to the shared experience of humanity. In addition, as Girard argues, people are able to take on the qualities of those they desire in order to become that which they desire through the use of mimetic doubling. However, the imitative process inevitably leads to violence that springs out of the desire to imitate, and language both creates the shared sense of humanity but causes such a feeling of tension in the larger culture as subjects compete to take on the role of the desired others. The desiring subject attempts to navigate through his or her mimetic desires and impersonation through acts of rhetorical violence. This violence and conflict are the inevitable consequences that are produced from the negotiations between the desiring subject and the desired object, and Girard describes the conflict that exists between that the desiring subject and the individual which is the desired object. He argues that this conflict between the desiring and the desired leads to the case of the monstrous double, as individuals ascribe their particular desires upon one another. Girard argues in Violence and the Sacred, that “the double and the monster are one and the same being” (Girard

160), which emphasizes the close relationship in which the imitative subject connects with the desired object. Not only do they operate in an inseparable relationship but they are actually the same entity. Violence rises out of mimesis, but the monstrous double is

13 the product that is generated by the mimetic violence, and the monstrous double causes great anxiety as well. The brilliance of Girard’s works is his relevance to the human condition, and that his arguments are not only relevant in a strict academic manner, but that he is so especially relevant for attempting to study human nature.

However, it is not simply enough to only engage within the immediate arguments of a philosopher, but an important aspect of literary criticism is its relationship to the written word, and Girard’s studies on mimesis and its preceding violence offer great opportunity for a new way to analyze literature, and his theses provide excellent examinations into human nature. In A Theater of Envy, Girard is able to connect Twelfth

Night with the themes of mimesis, the violence that occurs through such desire, and the final monstrous double that is produced by such rhetorical conflict. Twelfth Night is especially relevant to Girard’s discussion that is concerned with mimetic violence because the play itself is heavily invested in the violence and the monstrous double that is produced by mimetic desire. In fact, Shakespeare has written human representations of the monstrous double into this play in the forms of the twins, Viola and Sebastian, and the competing narcissists, Olivia and Count Orsino. Girard’s book A Theater of Envy includes two separate essays in his collection that are especially concerned with the mimesis and the concerns that follow mimesis in Twelfth Night, as the conflict that occurs in the play is concerned with the violence that arises within the play.

Girard introduces A Theater of Envy with the assertion that Shakespeare is deeply interested in what he repeatedly attributes to as envy, which Girard extrapolates to mean specifically attributes that arise out of mimesis and the mimetic violence that regularly is

14 navigated in human communication. “All envy is mimetic” (Girard 5) summarizes the premise of Girard’s argument, as he structures his own interpretations of Shakespeare’s works as specific concerns with the conflict that arises out of human speech patterns and the doubling that occurs through the subject’s imitations of the words of the desired object, to make them their own. Although Shakespeare may refer to this phenomenon exactly as envy, Girard believes much of Shakespeare’s work to be concerned with mimesis and the conflict rooted in the envy that drives people to imitate one another.

Indeed, mimesis is rooted in envy: the desiring subject is envious of that which is the desired object’s. When linguistically analyzed, the subject usurps the speech of the desired other in an imitative act. Envy fuels the actions of the desiring, and the individual begins to imitate the actions and speech of the desired. Shakespeare’s interest in the human emotion of envy is a very eloquent summation of the human experience, and

Girard’s interest in mimesis intersects powerfully with Shakespeare’s works, as both of their writings are essential studies based on the human experience.

Girard asserts that “my goal in this study is to show that the more quintessentially mimetic a critic becomes, the more faithful to Shakespeare he remains…the mimetic approach reveals an original thinker centuries ahead of his time, more modern than any of our so-called master thinkers” (Girard 5-6) because he views much of Shakespeare’s works to be specifically concerned with mimesis. Analyzing Shakespeare’s plays as particularly invested in the mimetic acts and subsequent violence that arise out of communication provide profound observations of the human condition. Additionally,

Count Orsino and Olivia serve as other human models of doubling, as their narcissism

15 and great self-love combine to operate in another close relationship of the enactment of mimesis. The relationship between laughter and cruelty further solidifies the relationship between language and violence that is present in the play. Malvolio is particularly filled with self-love and narcissism, wrongly interprets a letter, and through his inability to interpret such written rhetoric, he actively employs mimesis in his attempt to gain power.

However, his mistake posits him to become the butt of the joke, and the joke attempts to serve as the comedic scene of the play, yet the shroud of cruelty sits most strikingly over the what seem to be the self-described funniest scenes.

In addition, this paper seeks to consider the cruelty that is present in laughter, brought about by the violence that Girard claims accompanies mimetic desire. Although

Twelfth Night is frequently categorized as belonging to the comedy class of

Shakespearian theatre, there is a decidedly dark element within the play, and I believe the shroud of cruelty that covers the play is an effect of the mimetic violence that occurs in the plot. I am particularly interested in the ways in which the play seems to relish a certain cruelty, and I seek to consider the myriad of ways in which the cruelty of laughter is present throughout Twelfth Night. For example, the joke letter that Malvolio interprets as from Olivia, and the resulting brutality that is thrust upon him by other character members who have initiated the humiliated against the Puritan servant. I believe that the

Malvolio-baiting scene is especially pertinent to this discussion, and in fact may unlock an understanding of the violence present in the play and at the individual level. Finally, this paper seeks to ascribe the purpose of the twins in the play, and the power that the doubled maintains throughout the play, or what Girard refers to as the “monstrous

16 double”. The final goal of the theatrical work is the physical placement of the twins onstage at the same time, because the twins are the ultimate physical manifestation of mimesis and particularly the monstrous double, as they seem to be the same person yet they remain separate.

In summation, Girard reveals the mimetic process that occurs within individuals, and the characters of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. His brilliant arguments based on the human act of imitation are profound in order to better understand the human experience.

For Girard, mimetic desire and violence are present everywhere, as individuals negotiate between the desire to double and imitate, and the contrasting desire to erase and destroy the object of desire. Twelfth Night is a particularly brilliant work in which to serve as a literary representative of Girard’s argument based on imitative desires, because many of the events in the plotline relate to mimesis, and Shakespeare has written in two characters to be human representations of mimesis. And, as Aristotle and many others has affirmed, literature is the imitation of life. Studying great literary works is an excellent tool in which to study the intricacies of the human experience.

CHAPTER TWO

In this chapter, I am interested in the ways in which mimetic violence operates within Shakespeare’s contemporary age’s images concerning the Puritan, and how these images can lead to a greater understanding of the violence of the Malvolio-baiting subplot in particular, since it is an especially disturbing aspect of the play. The verbal violence at the hands of the other household members demonstrates the power of a fractured subjectivity at an individual level in Twelfth Night. Malvolio’s dialogue with Sir

Topas in the dark room scene prompts a rupture of Malvolio’s sense of self, and the sacrifice officially takes place in Act Five. Malvolio’s actual sacrifice is not his physical death, but the death of his previous imagined selfhood. This sacrifice is so profoundly cruel because the other characters offered Malvolio’s subjectivity as the sacrificial object without his consent, and caused the break of Malvolio’s internal subjectivity. Although the Malvolio-baiting scenes may be seen by some as moments of comedy, a mimetic analysis of Twelfth Night reveals the cruelty that accompanies the larger plot. However, the sacrifice of Malvolio’s selfhood is crucial to the meaning of the play; his metaphorical death is as necessary as sacrifice must be, and is actually a moment that must occur in order for the reunion to take place in the final scene. Girard claims in his A

Theater of Envy: “my goal in this study is to show that the more quintessentially

‘mimetic’ a critic becomes, the more faithful to Shakespeare he remains” (Girard 5), and

I believe that Girard is such an ideal critic to study alongside Shakespeare’s works, particularly Twelfth Night, because the Malvolio-baiting scenes are so exemplary for

Girard’s theses about the connections between desire and violence, especially with the

18 need for the presence of a scapegoat to sacrifice. The sacrifice of Malvolio is a profound moment of the play in which to analyze the inherent cruelty found in Twelfth Night and upon considering the connection between laughter and cruelty, as this play particularly reveals this relationship. Although Feste, while still playing the part of the Fool and changing into his Sir Topas priest apparel, quips “and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown” (4.2.4-5), readers analyzing Twelfth Night for its mimetic qualities would understand that it is Sir Topas’s violent questioning of Malvolio’s sanity that is intended to be the humor present in Act Four, Scene Two. But, as is common with humor, a certain amount of malevolence exists underneath the laughter as Sir Topas performs the sacrifice of Malvolio. However, one question remains: how is it that the other household attendants decide to choose the stoic servant as the object who must be sacrificed? I believe that much of the answer can be found in one of the first descriptions of Malvolio in the entire play; Maria says of him “sometimes he is a kind of puritan”

(2.3.126), thus introducing this noteworthy link between the Puritan servant as scapegoat, and the use of the Puritan as a trope in the early modern English literature and life. Could it be that Malvolio was singled out as the scapegoat to sacrifice because the other household attendants were deeply entrenched in symbols that were common in the early modern English tropes about Puritans?

Puritans are frequently stereotyped as the particularly strict members of early modern English society, and many people today frequently view the Puritans’ practices and beliefs as severe examples of the archaic Christian practices of the era that were more repressive than they were anything else. However, certain evidence found in the literature

19 and culture of early modern England reveals that the Puritans were unlike any of the stereotypes we have today of the early modern Puritans. Kristen Poole’s Radical Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England reveals several stereotype-shattering images of Puritans from Shakespeare’s era. Poole’s studies of the Puritan culture prove that such stereotypes of the rigid Puritans constantly attempting to rule their worlds with a heavy-handed repression in favor of an extremely tight-fisted Christianity, are in fact simply a trope that our culture has placed as an association with the early modern English culture of Shakespeare’s era. Poole argues that in the literature (including the works authored by Shakespeare) there are in fact examples of the fictional Puritan as a deviant figure, consistently transgressing the contemporary taboos of early modern England in favor of a kind of desire for the carnal pleasures of life. Poole claims that in the literature of the era, Puritans were often the characters driven by gluttony, lust, and pride, particularly in satirical works. These literary Puritans were often the characters that would turn out to be the scapegoats put up for sacrifice, when a story line called for a literal or metaphoric sacrifice. Following this observation from

Poole, Malvolio stands in as a placeholder for a trope that early modern English audiences would already be familiar with: the Puritan in the place as the figure to be sacrificed. The audience members of Shakespeare’s era would presumably recognize this literary trope in the play, and understand that the Puritan must become the scapegoat for sacrifice. Early modern England, particularly the literature produced in this time period often placed the blame for troubles on the Puritan, as his status consistently existed in a

20 liminal type of a member of this in-between category, caught between religiosity and carnal overindulgence.

Poole questions the accepted notions and tropes of the identity of those early modern English individuals known as the Puritans, particularly the roles that they occupied in early modern England. English priest John Benbrige’s 1646 sermon serves as a warning against heretical individuals in his sermon titled “God’s Fury, England’s Fire, or A Plaine Discovery of those Spiritual Incendiaries, which have set the Church and

State on Fire”. Benbrige describes “their hypocrisy in all they did…their Reformation was but a greater Deformation, and that opened yet wider the Flood-gates of their

Desolation”, combining both the heretical imagery of the early modern Puritan with allusions to the English Reformation that had occurred not even a century before

Benbrige gave his sermon. As a man in a socially hierarchical position of authority, a priest provided double edged warnings to parishioners: avoid contact with, and do not become, the Puritan. Poole notes in Radical Religion that “in the first half of the seventeenth century the term most often designated those who sought to separate themselves (in varying degrees) from the dominant ecclesiastical community” (Poole 3), further connecting the relationship between the Puritan as a threat for the already established religious hierarchy of the period. The resistance of the Puritans against the early modern ecclesiastical regulations demonstrated the dangerous degree of power that these individuals possessed. If it were not for the Puritans’ opposition to submit to the early modern English church’s status quo, sermons such as Benbrige’s would not be necessary, as priests would not feel the threat of a rebellious energy, demanding to be

21 quenched. Can it be that readers and critics today must wrap their minds around this image of the dissident Puritan, when all of the contemporary tropes concerning Puritans that we rely so heavily up on today, challenge the notions and images that we all rely upon when considering the reality of these individuals? Poole argues that indeed, such stereotypes must be re-imagined, as there is a plethora of growing evidence that “in its early modern literary usage, the term most often signified social elements that revisited categorization” (Poole 4) in contrast to the popular stereotypes. Unlike the typecast of the traditional Puritan as overtly religious, Poole asserts that “the puritan’s purity is thus revealed as a sanctimonious façade” (Poole 7), because the early modern English Puritan was obsessed with carnal pleasures, such as “lascivious” (Poole 8) sex acts, drinking, and gluttony. She notes that “in early modern literature, it is the drunken, gluttonous, and lascivious puritan who predominates” (Poole 12), and this image circulated throughout the culture. “In modern scholarship, Malvolio has long stood as the puritan poster boy; his concern with social borders, and his condemnation of festivity place him in direct opposition to the irreverent and riotous words of Sir Toby Belch” (Poole 9), however, in

Malvolio’s contemporary age, Puritans were seen to be anything besides overtly regulatory, as several anti-Puritan writings demonstrate.

Anthony Wood (1632-1695) mentioned “the schismatical Puritan” in the

“Athenae Oxonienses”, a historical document that detailed the writers and bishops who had been educated at the University of Oxford. Additionally, Henry Parker (1604-1652) and John Ley (1583-1662) wrote “A discourse concerning Puritans tending to a vindication of those, who unjustly suffer by the mistake, abuse, and misapplication of

22 that name” in 1641, and their text actually names the antipuritans and distinguished between the Catholics and other Protestants who were opposed to Puritanism. The authors note that antipuritans “persecute” the puritans out of hate for them, noting “that the hatred of Puritans flowes and descends from the highest of the Clergie to the lowest; and young students in the University know it now their wisest course to study the defamation of Puritans”, revealing a striking contemporary opinion of the English puritan. The text describes “this detested odious name of Puritan first began in the

Church presently after the Reformation, but now it extends it selfe further, and gaining strength as it goes, it diffuses its polysonous ignominy further, and being not contented to

Gangrene Religion, Ecclesiastical and Civil policy, it now threatens destruction to all morality also”, complicating the early modern critique of the puritan as a man of pure religion yet immorality, even going so far to name him the “devil Puritan”, solidifying the tradition of revulsion directed toward the puritan.

J. L. Simmons’s article “A Source for Shakespeare’s Malvolio: The Elizabethan

Controversy with the Puritans” offers an analysis of Malvolio’s position within a network of discourse about Puritanism that took place in Elizabethan England, both within the play and off stage. Simmons compares the Puritans’ obsession with their biblical interpretation of justice and seeking their own desired truth with Malvolio’s frantic search of the joke letter: “The Puritan comes to Scripture, like Malvolio to his letter, bent upon discovering his own justification” (Simmons 183), as Malvolio and Puritans alike seek out their own validation within sources that may not contain such justification at all.

Within the play, Malvolio’s desire to believe the letter’s claims are about him is

23 analogous to the Puritans’ obsession with their notions of a stringent religiosity. Simmons notes that this single handed obsession with this type of frenzied reading, meant to justify one’s behavior, “is an inevitable stage in the Puritan’s progress” (Simmons 184), but is not specific whether he is speaking about a Puritan in the general sense, or about

Malvolio individually. However, I do not believe that these specifics are necessarily particularly significant because such images of Puritans rely on the tropes about Puritans that were specific to Elizabethan English and were regularly circulated throughout

Shakespeare’s world. Additionally, this lack of specification about which Puritan

Simmons refers to is a reflection of the reliance of established tropes in general, linked with the purification of a word, directly related to the act of doubling itself. On the one hand, understanding the notion of a purification of the word is important within a discussion of Girard’s idea of mimetic desire, because the process of purifying the word relies on a systematic doubling. Individuals often reproduce a circulation of word purification as they conflate their notion of what the specific word signifies with the word itself, in a process of linguistic doubling. It seems as though Puritans and Malvolio as well, rely very heavily on this process of word purification, read both biblical commandments and letters alike, with a sense of finding self-justification in both, whether it is the joke letter “from Olivia” or in the scripture of the bible. Malvolio conflates both the actual message of the letter with what he wishes to read, producing a form of linguistic mimesis. Through a similar process, literary scholars may conflate their notions of Puritanism with Malvolio’s identity, and the role that Malvolio plays within the plot of Twelfth Night. For example, after reading many articles linking Malvolio with

Elizabethan English Puritanism, scholars often explain Malvolio’s role as representative of the Puritan tropes of Shakespeare’s world, when Malvolio may represent something else entirely.

Edward Cahill’s article “The Problem with Malvolio” re-directs the significance of Malvolio’s presence in Twelfth Night. Instead of focusing on the label of Malvolio as a

Puritan, Cahill focuses his analysis of Malvolio’s role within the play as a unique force with the Shakespearian tradition. Cahill points out that like many Shakespearian plays, the central plot of Twelfth Night has roots in other dramatic and prose works, but one component to the play’s plotline is unique: Malvolio’s storyline. “the subplot, involving

Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Maria, and their ‘gull’, Malvolio, was entirely Shakespeare’s invention…(Shakespeare) explores the themes of identity, desire, and the confusion of both” (Cahill 62), further solidifying a Girard-esque relationship between Malvolio’s failed negotiations between his mimetic desire and violence. However, Cahill brings up a thought provoking notion of the significance of Malvolio’s story: if the rest of the play was part of the already existing literary tradition, Shakespeare was aware of the significance of the power of the mimetic, as Girard has noted. Cahill, too, notices the importance of what he describes as the “gulling” of Malvolio, performed by Maria, Sir

Toby, and Sir Andrew, and he claims that the joke “is intended to make Malvolio an extreme and ridiculous version of the person he desires to be. On another level, however, it also seems clearly calculated to destroy his very identity” (Cahill 70), highlighting the play’s relationship with violence. In the first part of the play, Shakespeare draws the audience’s attention to the cruelty that Malvolio directs to the other characters, but in the

25 second part of the play, the cruelty is circulated back to him, in the form of the other household attendants’ revenge. However, their joke continues to gradually grow throughout the play, leading Malvolio away further and further from his original sense of self. The recirculation of the desire for violence through the mimetic process leads the other household attendants to cause a fracture within Malvolio, evident precisely in the final scene, as he departs from the scene, swearing revenge. Cahill’s interpretation of Act

Five is worth considering, as he offers a unique explanation of Malvolio’s declaration of revenge. He writes: “his true revenge, we might say, is his refusal to allow the main plot to be completely resolved before the end of the play”, (Cahill 77), further problematizing the play’s ending. This interpretation is very reminiscent of W.H. Auden’s dislike of

Twelfth Night and his aversion to the “inverted quotations” around the fun typically attributed to the play. Although there are some moments of comedy throughout the play, much of Twelfth Night is covered with a shroud of cruelty can be found in scenes such as that in Act Five, in which Malvolio simultaneously acts as a scapegoat to be sacrificed to restore the communal happiness and prevents such happiness for the other characters.

Girard’s emphasis of the alternating desires for mimesis and violence holds significant weight in an analysis of the violence that is present in Twelfth Night. This self- continuing process of impersonation and violence calls for a scapegoat, which develops specifically out of the violence of mimetic desires. The online Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun scapegoat as “a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency”, and additionally describes the biblical root of the word: “a goat sent into the wilderness after the Jewish chief priest had

26 symbolically laid the sins of the people upon it”. The historical origin of the word, a combination of escape and goat, can be dated to the sixteenth century according to the

Oxford English Dictionary. For Girard, the scapegoat has an important function in the circulation of the mimetic process, as a desire to annihilate accompanies the desire for imitation, and the scapegoat frequently is the physical embodiment of the figure to destroy in a mock sacrifice. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is particularly invested with imagery of a metaphorical sacrifice and an active concern with the scapegoat; in the case of this problem play, the scapegoat is Olivia’s servant Malvolio. I believe that the

Malvolio-baiting and fake exorcism scenes are imperative to gaining a better understanding of the circulation of mimetic violence that remains throughout Twelfth

Night. I will analyze the significance of these scenes within the violence that dominates the play and Girard’s arguments concerned with sacrifice and the importance of the scapegoat. The audiences of the early modern English theatres would be aware of the iconography of the puritan, and would therefore have a deeper understanding of the significance of Malvolio as the play’s scapegoat.

Throughout Twelfth Night, as the aristocratic characters of the play soliloquize, the servants’ subplot develops, featuring the elaborate Malvolio-baiting in the hopes that they may teach him a lesson. As Olivia describes Malvolio, he is “sick with self-love”

(1.1.82), and his obvious narcissistic sense of superiority over the other servants marks him as a target for the practical joke, designed to flip his self-importance on its head. The first scene that focuses on Malvolio’s conflict with other characters transpires in Act

Two, Scene Three, as Maria chastises Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste for making too

27 much racket. However, Malvolio enters, asking “Do ye make an alehouse of my lady’s house…is there no respect of place, persons, or time in you?” (2.3.88-92), and humiliates

Maria several lines later in the scene. “Mistress Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at any thing more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule. She shall know if it, by this hand” (2.3.121-124) and exits. Immediately afterward, Maria replies in a comparison to an ass, “Go shake your ears” (2.3.125), and plans a practical joke on

Malvolio, designed to put him back in his place. Although Malvolio embarrasses Maria in front of Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste, she quickly turns Malvolio’s cruelty in on himself, presenting a new turn in the play’s circulation of verbal violence. Several of the characters of Twelfth Night, such as Maria and Feste, have an ability to transfer a retaliatory blow in response to violent verbal performance. In Act Two, Scene Three,

Malvolio may have humiliated Maria by chastising her, but she was successfully able to manipulate his own cruelty against him, and created a plan for revenge in order to shame

Malvolio.

Maria includes the revelers in the trick, as they all detest the puritan servant’s conceit, and all of these characters have a strong desire to observe retribution against

Malvolio. Throughout the play, Malvolio exhibits a strong desire to advance socially by debasing other characters, in an evident desire for imitation of the higher classes, as

Malvolio consistently humiliates others in order to boost his own standing, continuing

Girard’s cycle of desire, imitation, and violence. Malvolio clearly abhor Sir Toby, Sir

Andrew, and Feste, but he singles out Maria to shame publicly. Because Malvolio turns his verbal performance into a diatribe against her, in a move that marginalized individuals

28 often perform, Maria takes his own cruelty and re-directs it back to him, continuing a circulation of violence. Maria’s plans for Malvolio’s revenge include an act of imitation as well, in a written form, as she leaves an anonymous love letter in a place where he will happen upon it, and writes in a handwriting that closely resembles Olivia’s, so that he may be led to believe that his mistress is in love with him, in order to manipulate his actions. While Malvolio employs his mimetic desire in his speech and actions, this trick letter to Malvolio represents a written form of mimesis. The letter will later be a component for the doubling of humiliation that circulates between the servants; in this earlier scene of the play, Malvolio embarrasses Maria but she is effective in repeating this desire for degradation and placing it on him instead. Maria’s genius is not only that she is able to quickly devise a plot in order to humble Malvolio, but that she recognizes the specific desire that Malvolio has for imitation. Her recognition of this mimetic desire gives her the opportunity to turn his own desires against him, as she plants the joke letter, another example of imitation.

The Malvolio-baiting scene in Act Two, Scene Three reveals the trick on

Malvolio, as both the other characters and the audience act as voyeurs. Although the joke letter does not specifically name Malvolio as the beloved, upon reading it, he deduces that Olivia had to have meant him. The conspirators wait to observe Malvolio’s reaction, and indeed, he demonstrates to the others what they already believed they knew about him: that Malvolio delights in a certain kind of self-love, which was his initial sin.

However, the letter includes directions for Malvolio to wear an outfit that Olivia actually despises: yellow, cross-stitched garters, and as he reads “she thus advises thee that sighs

29 for thee” (2.5.134-135.) he decides to follow the directions of the letter, as he finds proof of its validity in the line “M.O.A.I. doth sway my life” (2.5.100), concluding that the

M.O.A.I. surely meant Malvolio, and that Olivia was in love with him. The written reproduction and Malvolio’s vocal utterances of M.O.A.I. are both representations of the doubling found within the letters. Because Malvolio finds his image in the initials

M.O.A.I, he claims them as his own and continues to behave as the letter instructs to act.

His ownership over M.O.A.I. empowers his desire to imitate the directions that the letter gives to the recipient. However, Olivia became disquieted by the appearance of her previously stoic servant, and concluded that Malvolio must have become crazed; the household attendants come to the same conclusion (and had long believed that about

Malvolio) and decide to send for the curate Sir Topas to perform an exorcism. Malvolio is isolated in a dark room, as Feste enters, dressed as Sir Topas, in order to perform a mock exorcism. However, rather than exorcise anything from Malvolio, the exorcism seems to demonstrate the metaphorical sacrifice that Girard is interested in when discussing the effects of mimetic desire and violence; it appears to satisfy the others with a certain desire for vengeance, rather than to erase anything from Malvolio. In the last scene of the play, the abused servant crosses the stage, swearing revenge on those who had wronged him.

Malvolio’s efforts to augment his social status fail miserably, although his desire is not for nothing: he does in fact double the speech and mannerisms of those who are in positions of power over him, and even those who are not in the play but are ubiquitous presences in early modern England. The aristocracy (including characters of Twelfth

Night such as Olivia and Orsino) spoke and acted differently than those who were their household attendants. The noble members of the households speak in a language that more closely resembles courtly speech, while the servants and household attendants speak in a freer form of prose. Malvolio’s imitation of the speech and habits of (what he perceives to be) the sobriety of the nobility as he moves toward the mimetic element, in order to gain a higher position in society. Malvolio first appears onstage as Feste jokes with Olivia, and Malvolio replies, “I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone…I protest I take these wise men that crow so at these set kind of fools no better than the fools’ zanies” (1.5.76-81.), revealing his disgust with the “lower” people around him.

Although Girard describes the universality of the mimetic desire present within individuals, at times, is not specifically effective enough for an individual to act upon his or her mimetic desires to socially advance. Malvolio’s predicament continues throughout the play as a carry-over of Girard’s notions about the problematic nature of mimesis: although the desiring individual craves becoming the other, the double that is produced through the mimetic process is not really the individual’s double, but an imagined, narcissistic self. Malvolio imagines throughout the play that by acting superior to the others, he may be able to really become superior to them. However, characters such as

Maria and Feste see the narcissistic Malvolio that manifests itself throughout the course of the play.

Malvolio’s failed efforts to enact his mimetic desires actually cause Sir Andrew,

Sir Toby, Maria, and Feste to plan the elaborate Malvolio-baiting in the play. Malvolio is

31 a servant who believes that he is better and imagines himself to be a member of the aristocracy. His narcissism is reflected back to him in his doubled image, the Malvolio of

Act Two, Scene Five, and his visible narcissism increases his own anxieties throughout the play. Although he appears to only have a desire for social advancement, Shakespeare has Malvolio represent a dramatic example of mimetic desire. While attempting to imitate the habits of the aristocracy, Malvolio also sees the other household attendants as candidates for his own scapegoats to sacrifice, even if they are socially superior to him, such as Sir Toby and Sir Andrew. Each imitation based in mimetic desire calls for a sacrifice, and Malvolio’s cruelty towards those he sees as below him is an ideal site in which to imagine the way that he circulates mimetic violence throughout the play.

However, his circulation of violence is turned against him as he discovers the joke letter, and begins to descend into the trap that Maria sets for him, specifically designed to humble Malvolio and remind him that he is not a member of the aristocracy. The joke letter succeeds so well because Malvolio’s desire to become a noble is evident to the other characters, who are eager to see his downfall; they are able to turn his mimetic desire against him, and manipulate his desire by leading him toward resembling a maniac.

Malvolio’s exhilaration over the letter is not an excitement of his mistress’s supposed love for him, but that this potential relationship could mean his social advancement. Malvolio fantasizes about “Calling my officers about me, in my branched velvet gown, having come from a daybed, where I have left Olivia sleeping” (2.5.42-44) representing both his power over his servants, in a reversal of his constant status as a

32 servant responding to the orders of those of a higher ranking than him, and in a sexual reversal in which he sleeps with the woman who was previously his boss. He continues verbalizing his reversal fantasy “And then to have the humor of state, and after a demure travel of regard, telling them I know my place as I would they should do theirs” (2.5.47-

49), and specifically names Toby and describes how he would upbraid his new “kinsman

Toby” (2.5.49), especially for his love of drink. The scene continues as Malvolio reads the letter, “to inure thyself to what thou art like to be, cast thy humble slough and appear fresh…go to, thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so; if not, let me see thee a steward still, the fellow of servants, and not worthy to touch Fortune’s fingers” (2.5. 130-140),

“revealing” Olivia’s love for her servant, and at the same time, serving as a temptation for Malvolio’s hunger for social advancement, as the letter further drives Malvolio’s strange countenance of Act 3, Scene 4, as he appears to be a madman, dressed in yellow cross-gartered stockings, and acts boorishly to the other characters. Olivia commands that her servants and Sir Toby tend to Malvolio’s madness, which he reads as a positive development, “Why, everything adheres together, that no dram of a scruple, no scruple of a scruple, no obstacle, no incredulous or unsafe circumstance…Nothing that can be can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes” (3.4.71-75), believing that Olivia’s response to be a sign of her love for him, signaling what he interprets to be the impetus for his social progress.

In his A Theater of Envy, Girard states that “all envy is mimetic” (Girard 5) because at the root of the desire to imitate exists a strong yearning to become the desired other, since this desired other appears to have a fulfilled life in the eyes of the observing

33 subject. It is precisely a coveting of the desired object’s life, in order that the desiring subject may escape from their human anxieties. The relationship between Girard’s

“mimesis” and Shakespeare’s “envy” remain closely linked to another:

“Like mimetic desire, envy subordinates a desired something to the someone who

enjoys a privileged relationship with it. Envy covets the superior being that

neither the someone or something alone, but the conjunction of the two seem to,

possess. Envy involuntarily testifies to a lack of being that puts the envious to

shame.” (Girard 4)

In Twelfth Night, Malvolio’s desire for social advancement reflects this relationship between envy and mimetic desire. He believes that he should really be a member of the aristocracy, although he is really a servant; this incongruity between his fantasy and reality drives his desire for imitation of the aristocratic characters. However, Malvolio’s desires are originally based on his cognitive dissonance regarding the nobles’ social standing and anxiety for his lack of social position as a servant, connecting the link between envy and imitation. He believes that the habits of an individual should determine one’s social standing and feels an internal conflict that drunkards such as Sir Toby are nobles, while the stalwart Malvolio remains a servant. Much like the doubled being is an imagined figure, the superior social position of the aristocracy is an image that Malvolio creates, and it is actually this image of his life as a noble that leads him to fantasize about his potential sexual relationship with his mistress. It is not the reality of becoming a noble, but the imagined fantasy that Malvolio creates that fuels his desire to obtain a higher social status. The anxiety that he experiences is precisely his worry over his “lack

34 of being” (Girard 4), as he despairs over his low social position. I believe that the “lack of being” (Girard 4) is related to the feelings of human fallibility that is within each individual that leads to the desire to imitate so as to avoid this feeling.

In Violence and the Sacred (1972), Girard describes the relationship between the individual’s envy of the desired object and the individual’s desire to move toward impersonation:

“the unchanneled mimetic impulse hurls itself blindly against the obstacle of a conflicting desire. It invites its own rebuffs, and those rebuffs will in turn strengthen the mimetic inclination. We have, then, a self-perpetuating process” (Girard 148) that will continue as the desiring, envious individual conceives of his or her subjectivity between negotiations of a cycle of envy-desire-imitation-violence. Malvolio becomes a victim in a circulation of violence and contempt that he had started in Act Two, Scene Three in which he talks down to and reprimands the other members of the household, who are socially his equals, and superiors, but in his mind, are inferior people.

The violence that accompanies mimetic desire becomes the need to perform a sacrifice, metaphorical or literal, in which the subject may obliterate that which he or she desires to become, in order to destroy the division between the self and the object, thus becoming the object. Girard’s Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World offers a theological analysis of the need for sacrifice that is not only relevant to gain a more profound understanding of Christianity, but is relevant to the study of the relationship between desire, violence, and scapegoating in which the characters (such as Maria, Feste,

Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and particularly Malvolio himself) of Twelfth Night engage within

35 the Malvolio-baiting scenes. To Girard, the ineffable relationship between desire and violence cannot be separated, and thus, sacrifice is a major component. In his book,

Girard states that “what sacrifices the victim is the blow delivered by the sacrifice, the violence that kills the victim, annihilating it and placing it above everything else by making it in some sense immortal” (Girard 226), in an act that at the same time immortalizes both the sacrificed being and the act of sacrifice itself. For Girard, the most important moment in sacrifice, the point that is itself the most essentially meaningful is the moment of the blow of the sacrifice. Following Girard’s opinion on sacrifice, I believe that the precise moment of this sacrificial act in Twelfth Night is the scene in which Feste appears before Malvolio in his Sir Topas the curate garb, sent to supposedly exorcise the malady from Malvolio. Because his subplot eventually takes over the broader plotline of the play, I believe that Twelfth Night immortalizes Malvolio. In fact,

King Charles I (1600-1649) had crossed off the title Twelfth Night and instead wrote

“Malvolio” on his copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio, demonstrating the power of

Malvolio’s story within the larger plotline of the play.

The “Dark Room scene” of Act Four, Scene Two is the climax of Malvolio- baiting trick, serving as the moment of sacrifice for the entire work, and to understand the cruelty that remains present throughout the play. The cruelty that circulates throughout the play is a metaphorical violence that stems from the desire of the characters’ competitions through verbal performances. Feste, in the role of Sir Topas the curate, approaches Malvolio in the dark room, and promises to cure the servant of the demon that ails him to become manic. In the dark room, the clown appears as a physical doubling of

36 the curate to communicate with a figure that he had helped to create: the insane Malvolio.

Feste has two identities in this meta-theatrical scene, which speaks to both the mimesis of the play and in theatre as an art. This scene in Twelfth Night offers an example of the performative nature of imitation: like an actor in a play, the individual must interpret what he or she believes to be the habits that make up the being of the desired other, in order to become like the other. Earlier in the play, Malvolio takes up what he believes is the essence of the aristocracy, in his hopes to become a member of the aristocracy. In the dark room scene, Feste takes up the conduct and being of the curate, while he performs as

Sir Topas. Ultimately, the initial act of mimesis is an act of performance, in the essentialist belief that enacting the behavior of the other will cause the desiring individual to become like the other. Feste reveals that Malvolio’s prior verbal performances with the other characters were simply that: a performance. However, yet again, another character recirculates Malvolio’s mimetic desires against him, this time in the form of a fake exorcism.

In the dark room, Malvolio begs Feste/Sir Topas to give him the benefit of the doubt and listen to him “Sir Topas, never was man thus wronged. Good Sir Topas, do not think I am mad. They have laid me here in hideous darkness” (4.2.26-28), for although

Malvolio has been branded as the object of the cruel laughter of the others, he knows and recognizes that his sanity remains intact throughout the fake exorcism. However, as Sir

Topas, Feste continues to speak with “the demon” specifically designed to cause

Malvolio to doubt his own sanity. Malvolio argues with him that “this house is dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell. And I say, there was never man thus

37 abused. I am no more mad than you are. Make the trial of it in any constant question”

(4.2.40-43), as the house is shrouded in such dark ignorance because each of the characters of the household reaffirmed the validity of Malvolio’s insanity. In reply to

Malvolio’s descriptions of the dark room, Feste as Sir Topas states “Why, it hath bay windows transparent as barricades, and the clerestories toward the south-north are as lustrous as ebony. And yet complainest thou of obstruction?” (4.2.33-35), revealing a pattern of banter. Sir Topas commands that Feste must not speak to Malvolio, who begs for a pen and paper to write to Olivia. Feste says he will not bring back anything for

Malvolio, and instead continues to question him instead when Malvolio claims that he is as sane as any man in Illyria. However, Feste does eventually bring Malvolio a pen, paper, and a candle so that he may write his letter to Olivia, but only after performing the mock exorcism.

In the final scene of the play, Malvolio attempts to make his pains known, although at that point, his attempts to gain a sense of justice for a punishment that matched his humiliation are long past. The final scene of the play in which Malvolio was sacrificed, and singled out as the scapegoat in order to satisfy the violent desires of the other household attendants, is critical for an understanding. Sir Topas questions

Malvolio’s sanity in such a profound manner that it causes an even greater angst within

Malvolio, following the trick letter that had reversed his mimetic desire and violence onto himself. This moment of sacrifice is so important for understanding Malvolio’s fractured subjectivity, because once an individual’s identity (which includes his or her sanity) is questioned, that person begins to doubt the image of their self-image, leading to this

38 feeling of a broken sense of self. Ultimately, it exists as a form of sacrifice within the individual, as the individual’s subjectivity is broken, and so is the self-imagined individual, because the individual can only withstand so many attacks to his or her distinctive sense of subjectivity before such subjectivity will splinter, and eventually completely collapse. With the sacrifice of Malvolio, as he storms offstage swearing revenge, the twins are able to appear onstage together, and the reunion can be possible, along with the healing of the community. As Girard believes in his observations of the cycle of mimetic desire and violence, a scapegoat must always exist, in which the community is able to release the communal desires for violence. However, the play may end with the healed community of Illyria, but the image of Malvolio remains as forever fractured in the minds of the audience and characters alike.

To conclude, I believe that because of the contemporary hatred toward puritans and in part to his Puritanism, Malvolio unwittingly becomes the target to serve as the scapegoat within the circulation of cruelty present in Twelfth Night. His sense of superiority, possibly related to his puritan uprightness, is the source of his ideals for a higher social status over other characters such as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew.

His cruelty toward Maria necessitated the revenge upon Malvolio, and the others took advantage of his want for a higher social status, fueling the trick letter. More than any erotic or amorous desires for his mistress, Malvolio’s hunger for societal advancement drives his enthusiasm for the letter from Olivia, within the Malvolio-baiting subplot. An analysis of Malvolio’s supposed Puritanism provides a thought provoking dialogue on both the Elizabethan English tropes about Puritans, and an interesting discussion of the

39 notion of the purification of the word. Due to the cruel energy of resentment and violence present in the Malvolio-baiting scenes, I believe that Twelfth Night is an ideal example in which to imagine Girard’s philosophy about mimetic violence and the desire for imitation in a dramatic setting.

CHAPTER THREE

The scenes in Twelfth Night that would most typically elicit laughter from the audiences are often moments of a type of verbal violence, in which characters attempt to negotiate the connected desire to imitate with the similar desire to annihilate. A certain darkness enshrouds the play, but only covertly, because as is often the case for the relationship between violence and comedy, the locus of the malevolence of laughter lies beneath the surface of a joke, rather than to be explicitly exposed. The violent laughter that the play Twelfth Night elicits is very similar to the cruelty that is regularly present in humor, as the two seemingly unrelated elements actually operate in a close relationship, whereby one informs and relies on the presence of the other. In particular, the Malvolio- baiting and fake exorcism scenes of Twelfth Night may initially appear to the audiences to be moments of comic relief in the play, this subplot reveals the cruelty found in our laughter. This joke that is central to the subplot of the play can offer an interesting dramatic representation of the connection between laughter and cruelty in the entirety of

Twelfth Night. The presence of the malevolent laughter in this Shakespearian dark comedy is especially relevant to the argument of Charles Baudelaire’s 1863 book The

Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays, especially the sixth chapter of his book to what he refers to as “On the Essence of Laughter”. In this chapter, Baudelaire examines the relationship between laughter and cruelty that is an especially succinct yet profound exploration of the significance of the malevolent.

Baudelaire’s ideas about laughter and what he refers to as caricatures are greatly informed by the philosophy of the Christian psychologist Louis Bourdaloue; Baudelaire

41 notes that the quote “the Sage laughs not save in fear and trembling”, is frequently attributed to Bourdaloue, and this quote serves as an ideal starting point in which to consider the significance of the relationship between comedy and evil. Baudelaire believes that this quote associated with Bourdaloue is particularly significant because

“the Sage takes a very good look before allowing himself to laugh, as though some residue of uneasiness and anxiety must still be left him…the comic vanishes altogether from the point of view of absolute power and knowledge” (Baudelaire 149), and like

Girard, Baudelaire uses a theological framework in order to explore a significant aspect of the human experience. To Baudelaire, the Sage represents an image of an Orthodox

Christian, well versed in the holiness of biblical scholarship in order to structure a worldview founded in religious purity. Because of his knowledge of religion, the sacred, and the profane, the Sage automatically recognizes the extensive separation between the good and holy, and the evil that is found in laughter. His “absolute power and knowledge” (Baudelaire 149) prevents the Sage from laughing, because as Baudelaire describes, there is a Satanic force found within the comedy of the caricature. Girard is interested in the impact of the biblical fall of humanity, and in a similar sense, so is

Baudelaire; he even connects the relationship between evil and laughter as a byproduct of the biblical fall. Because of the imperfect status of humankind after the biblical fall, laughter is an indication of a separation from what is holy.

Baudelaire asserts that “the comic is one of the clearest tokens of the Satanic in man” (Baudelaire 151) and for this reason as well, the Sage simply cannot laugh: to laugh signifies a complete disconnect from the divine, for a laugh reveals the human

42 imperfection after the biblical fall. “The laugh on his lips is a sign of just as great a misery as the tears in his eyes (Baudelaire 150), revealing the sinister power found in the act of laughing. The malicious laugh at the caricature connects with Girard’s writings about the simultaneous desire for imitation and the corresponding desire for destruction, because a caricature is an example of an act of imitative doubling. A caricature is a doubled image itself, because it is a written or drawn representation of the caricature creator’s image of the object or individual that the creator uses to represent his or her own perspective of that individual or object. The reproduced image is not the actual thing or person, but because it is a representation, it is naturally a doubling that the caricature artist creates of his or her image of the caricatured object; the focus is removed from the object itself to the caricature artist’s image of the object. The created caricature corresponds with the imitation, and the annihilation corresponds with the caricature itself and its separation from the actual object. Baudelaire’s writings about malevolent laughter produced by the caricature are especially significant for understanding Shakespeare’s dramatic representations of this link between comedy and cruelty. For example, the power-upsurge represented in Hamlet represents this relationship of Girard’s descriptions of the mimetic desire for annihilation and Baudelaire’s notions of the malevolence of laughter.

Baudelaire’s argument about laughter at a caricature is especially significant when analyzed alongside Girard’s sense of the philosophic significance of the desire for the mimetic, for “caricature is a double thing; it is both drawing and idea-the drawing violent, the idea caustic and veiled” (Baudelaire 151), much in the same way in which the

43 simultaneous yet paradoxical desire for imitation and the desire for annihilation are continuously linked in the mind of the individual participating in the mimetic process.

The caricature operates nearly identically to the mimetic desire: the idea remains “veiled”

(Baudelaire 151) as a secret desire to become the other, situated in the mind of the desiring subject, while the violent drawing corresponds directly to the imitative process, in which the desiring subject attempts to take up the being and habits of the desired other, in order to become the other. Baudelaire believes that analyzing the caricature “from the artistic point of view, the comic is an imitation” (Baudelaire 157), revealing the mimetic element that is found in humor, particularly the sinister nature of the comedy of the caricature. The laughter that the caricature produces is “the expression of a double, or contradictory, feeling; and that is the reason why a convulsion occurs” (Baudelaire 156), because although the individual may laugh at a humorous caricature, the laughter produced is not necessarily an expression of an irrepressible enthusiasm, but rather a problematic feeling in which the individual is unable to distinguish one distinct emotion.

The darkness of humor is a process of this doubling of two separate feelings toward the caricature, resulting from the conflict between righteous goodness and a figure of evil that is present in comedy.

For Baudelaire, the origin of laughter is based on human feelings of advantage over other individuals, branching from pride. Ultimately, this locus of laughter reveals its truly sinister nature, which Baudelaire argues is a reaction to the failing of another individual, a person affected by the biblical fall, and gives the observer, another fallen person too, a smug sense of superiority. For example, an individual tripping on the

44 walkway can often elicit laughter from those individuals in close proximity to the event.

However, this laughter reveals the cruelty found in human nature, that seems to take delight in the suffering of others, and that “it is certain that if you care to explore this situation, you will find a certain unconscious pride at the core of the laughter’s thought”

(Baudelaire 152) in a scenario such as the laughter based on another’s failings. To

Baudelaire, comedy is typically based on the failures of others, in which the laughing individuals simply find a sense of relief that it is not they who have failed, and further increases these feelings of pride.

However, even though laughter is so closely linked with evil, Baudelaire asserts that “since laughter is essentially human, it is in fact, essentially contradictory”

(Baudelaire 153), noting its complex relationship with humanity. The more a person laughs, the closer he or she is related to laughter, but at the same time, the individual becomes closer to the holy. Even though Baudelaire seems to be condemning of laughter, his argument is much more complex, and in face he believes that “it is with his tears that man washes the afflictions of man, and that it is with his laughter that sometimes he soothes and calms his heart, for the phenomena engendered by the fall will become the means of redemption” (Baudelaire 150), because although malicious laughter, such as laughing at the caricature, demonstrates the sinister nature of comedy, the act of laughing is solely human and thus, can be a source of developing feelings of community. The individuals that laugh together can feel a kinship toward one another, and eventually, develop this communal relationship toward the holy. “There are different varieties of laughter…many sights which provoke our laughter are perfectly innocent; not only the

45 amusements of childhood, but even many of the things that tickle the palate of artists have nothing to do with the spirit of Satan” (Baudelaire 156), and indeed, for Baudelaire, the reasons for laughter are not found in a unilateral mode of categorization, but through further close analysis. However, the laughter present in Twelfth Night seems to be very closely related to the sinister nature found in the comedy of the caricatures that

Baudelaire describes. With this frame to imagine the humor found in the play,

Baudelaire’s notions of laughter can help us to gain a richer understanding of the relationship between cruelty and laughter in Twelfth Night, especially the Malvolio- baiting subplot.

Baudelaire’s “On the Essence of Laughter” provides an ideal framework in order to begin examining the violence that is present in the moments of comedy in Twelfth

Night, and this paper seeks to consider the ways in which Shakespeare’s dark comedy offers a dramatic representation of the relationship between cruelty and laughter.

Although Twelfth Night contains a multitude of scenes in which Shakespeare casts characters against one another as they circulate a violent energy from individual characters to others, I believe that the malevolent laughter problematizes the entire text.

The comedy within the play captures the sinister laugh that Baudelaire is so interested in analyzing in his text “On the Essence of Laughter”. In particular, the Malvolio-baiting subplot operates on the violence present in Girard’s theories of mimetic desires for imitation and destruction of other individuals, as well as Baudelaire’s conclusions concerned with the cruelty of laughter. However, there is malevolence throughout the entire play that includes more than just the Malvolio-baiting scenes. I am interested in

46 this comedy of the caricature that is present in Twelfth Night, but I am also curious as to the importance of the reunion of the twins Viola and Sebastian, and why it is especially important for the mimetic element of this play. To conclude this paper, I will analyze how an understanding of the ways in which laughter and cruelty circulate through Twelfth

Night can provide a literary lens in which to better comprehend this relationship that exists within human interactions.

Baudelaire believes that the laughter at another individual’s failures directly originates from Satan because to laugh at a caricature is to revel in smug feelings of the

Satanic after the biblical Fall; the laugh is a product of the feeling of relief that the individual laughing is not in the position of the one being laughed at over a failing. A smug arrogance in the soul becomes transferred into a laugh at another, and this feeling of pride in comparison to another failing individual is seductively sinister. This laugh is actually the opposite of the mimetic, which is an assimilation of another self, while the

Satanic laugh is the denial of another self. The Malvolio-baiting subplot circulates this laugh at the failings of others, and in particular, at Malvolio’s inability to recognize that he becomes the butt of the joke; however, he is the character that originally starts the process of circulating the malicious laughter of Twelfth Night. Early on in the play, Olivia and Feste engage in a conversation about the ways in which Olivia mourns for her brother’s death; as the clown figure of Twelfth Night, Feste is able to seemingly effortlessly manipulate the speech of other characters of the play in order to produce laughter at the silliness of that character. This laughter is a type of laughing at oneself, a solace and healing an alternative to what Malvolio proposes; it therefore does not contain

47 the maliciousness of the laughter at the caricature that Baudelaire describes because it is not at the expense of another, which is inherently malicious. However, Malvolio enters the scene and attempts to put down Feste, “I marvel your ladyship takes delight in such a barren rascal. I saw him put down the other day with an ordinary fool that has no more brain than a stone…unless you laugh and minister occasion to him, he is gagged” (1.5.75-

79), the smugness in Malvolio’s speech demonstrates his denial and refusal to see the other characters, and he continues to speak down to those whom he perceives to be below him and because of his obvious arrogance, Maria singles him out as the object of a joke to gain revenge, which operates within a process of doubling. The Malvolio-baiting is designed to humble the arrogant servant into his proper social order; because he feels a sense of superiority over others, other characters use the joke against him in order to find something related to Malvolio to laugh at. The design of the joke is to reverse Malvolio’s perceived social order in which he places himself above Maria, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew, and Feste. The anticipated outcome of the joke would be a humbler Malvolio and a metaphorical change in the social structure of the household, in which he resigns himself to a position lower than those he had previously imagined to be lower than himself. The

Malvolio-baiting reflects Baudelaire’s connection between laughter and cruelty.

Malvolio’s snide comments to the other household members of Twelfth Night reflect his own feelings of superiority over them, whether they are his social equals, such as Maria, or his social superiors, such as Sir Toby or Sir Andrew. His sense of superiority is rooted in his abstemious avoidance of participating in the type of the revelry he observes the other characters partaking in, and talks down to them, especially to his

48 fellow servant, Maria. When he catches Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew enjoying revelry for the holiday Epiphany, Malvolio speaks to Maria and chastises her, “Mistress

Mary, if you prized my lady’s favour at any thing more than contempt, you would not give means for this uncivil rule: she shall know of it, by this hand” (2.3.108-110.) and threatens the members of the party that he would go to inform Olivia as to the lack of decorum of the revelers. His disgust at their celebration reveals his contempt for the individuals that he believes to be less than him, but although Malvolio acts the stereotypically Orthodox part of a rigid Puritan, his self-righteous arrogance eventually causes him to become the butt of the joke for the play. However, Malvolio represents this similar feeling of superiority, and because the other characters recognize his supremacy, they plan a joke in order to subvert Malvolio’s individually fashioned social structure in which he is at the top while characters such as Maria, Sir Toby, or Feste are below him in position.

The Malvolio-baiting joke was purposefully designed in order to humble him, and the conspirators are successful in bringing Malvolio down to the level that he must remain: the position of a servant. However, the joke induces a type of a malicious sense of humor that is so important in the framework of Baudelaire’s proposal about the relationship between laughter and cruelty, and indeed, the Malvolio-baiting joke demonstrates the significance of the evil found within laughter. Although the sight of the clown of Twelfth Night dressing as a priest would undeniably be a humorous spectacle, much of the Malvolio-baiting subplot is completely invested in the type of cruelty that accompanies the malicious laugh, a feeling of supremacy of one fallen individual taking

49 pleasure in the failings of another. This malicious laugh leverages the individual laughing in a similar way to Malvolio’s perceived feelings of dominance over the other characters, and the hoped-for result of the Malvolio-baiting joke. Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir

Andrew strategically planned out their scheme to appeal to Malvolio’s desires in order to more effectively humiliate him, and through their cruelty, they, along with the audience, laugh at Malvolio’s gullibility to believe the letter and follow the ridiculous directions found in it. This laughter at Malvolio’s gullibility represents the link that Baudelaire describes that operates within the relationship between cruelty and laughter.

Because of this malevolent laughter present in Twelfth Night, the characters playing the joke on Malvolio, such as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, reveal the circulation of these feelings of conceit, and in the case of the Malvolio-baiting, the group of tricksters propel Malvolio’s superiority back to themselves. The locus of Malvolio’s arrogance is in his speech and the language that he uses when he speaks to other characters; however, as Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew play the joke on

Malvolio, the sense of certain individuals’ over dominion others simply changes shape.

The Malvolio-baiting scenes simply initiate a change in the manifestations of the individual characters’ pride become reversed onto Malvolio and the form of the demonstration of power changes from the language to the laugh. In Twelfth Night, the joke on Malvolio produces the malevolent laugh that Baudelaire describes: the tricksters playing the joke on Malvolio and the audience members who laugh at the scenes in which

Malvolio believes the letter to be from Olivia, and when Feste performs a fake exorcism is a reaction of relief from those individuals that laugh. This relief comes from the pride

50 of the fallen individual, and that although they frequently do fail, at least their failure is not as ridiculous as the butt of the joke, and in the case of Twelfth Night, the audience members and tricksters alike laugh because they are relieved that they are not as gullible as Malvolio. This malevolent laugh takes delight in the failings of others, but not out of a true vindictiveness in relishing the pain of others, however, the malevolent laugh does serve its purpose to validate the feelings of conceit at the individual level.

Maria, Feste, Sir Toby, and Sir Andrew, as well as the audience reading or watching the play, may take some delight in the Malvolio-baiting subplot, because there is a humorous element to a successful practical joke, especially if the butt of that joke is an arrogant individual. Malvolio is an ideal object to become the butt of a practical joke because of his haughty attitude, and for this, they circulate this energy of superiority back onto him, and the joke does elicit laughter in the characters and audience alike. However, this laughter brings with it a sense of advantage over the idiot who falls for the trick and is easily manipulated, because it means that it is another individual that is the gullible moron. But, because of the cruel laughter present in the Malvolio-baiting subplot, the feelings of pride never really leave the plotline of the play; instead, they only change their sites within the play from Malvolio’s haughty speech to the laughter of the tricksters and the audience alike at Malvolio’s moronic gullibility. The Malvolio-baiting subplot works for the trickster characters to power over Malvolio, however, they gain an edge of supremacy in a similar manner over Malvolio, in the sense that it only exists in their own minds and not actually in a real shift in the social schema. This feeling of dominance that dominates much of the play’s plotline is not a literal higher position, but rather an

51 imagined domination of others. However, as Baudelaire describes, this laughter is especially vile because it contains a sort of pleasure in one fallen individual at the expense of another fallen person, and therefore, contributes to a sense of pride over the gullible character who becomes the butt of the joke. The cruelty found in Twelfth Night is this same malicious laughter that Baudelaire describes that is particularly disturbing about the laughter at the caricature. Within the plotline Twelfth Night there is a sinister shadow that enshrouds the play that is supposed to be a light, silly romp with cross- dressing twin confusion, a clown with a quick sense of humor, and the general joviality found in the holiday time of Epiphany, the original twelfth night celebration. However, readers and audience members become the witnesses and participants to a kind of malicious laughter, and instead of taking a pure delight in the comedy of the play, instead, experience mixed emotions at the absurdity and simultaneous cruelty of the play.

Because of its dual-nature, Twelfth Night is an especially important Shakespearian text in which to observe some of the distinctly human aspects of the doubled nature of human experience, alternating between cruelty and laughter that at first glance seem separate but occur and inform together. I believe that the genius of both Twelfth Night and

Shakespeare’s works in general, is this single author’s ability to so accurately dramatize the human experience. Girard claims that there is this tension in human culture already, and Shakespeare further thematizes the cruelty present in laughter and human interactions.

Additionally, the cruelty present in Twelfth Night is not only contained to the scenes that comprise the Malvolio-baiting subplot, but there is a certain amount of

52 maliciousness in other interactions between the characters of the play. For example, in the last scene of the play when the reunion of the two twins takes place, Sebastian turns his affection toward Antonio into a near apathy. Earlier in the play, when Antonio finds

Sebastian walking through Illyria after the shipwreck, he quickly helps Sebastian to recuperate after the accident. However, despite the homosocial bonding that takes place between the two men, once the twins’ reunion takes place in the final scene, Sebastian casts aside the man who had helped him after the shipwreck. Dejected by the one he loves, Antonio is cast aside in a final cruelty in the last scene of the play. In this play, when a character is done with using another for their individual purpose (whether it is for a joke or for earnest help), that character is often quickly dismissed.

However, this final scene does serve as a moment of closure for the malevolence of Twelfth Night, and through the reunion of the twins, the play ends with a satisfying conclusion. Although much of the plotline of the play is a dramatic representation of the power plays that arise out of the mimetic desires to imitate and annihilate, the presence of both twins onstage serves as a powerful image of a created unity that must occur to cancel out the division caused by mimetic desires and the malicious laugh. I believe that the onstage reunion of both of the twins serves to correct both the problems of malevolence and laughter at the caricature that cause the problems of the cruel humor in this Shakespearian problem play. Because they appear to look so similar to one another,

Viola and Sebastian serve as one another’s mimetic double, a human representation of the imitation found in their likeness. Upon seeing the twins together, Olivia exclaims, “One face, one voice, one habit, and two persons! A natural perspective, that is and is not!”

(5.1.206-207), reflecting the uncanny experience of observing the identical appearances of both Viola and Sebastian as they stand onstage for the first time in the play. At the same time that the twins’ doubled appearance seems to be natural, it is simultaneously aberrant, and leaves the other characters, such as Olivia, left to muse about their relation to one another because they are individual people, yet appear to be the same person. This human representation of the uncanny, no matter how peculiar it may seem to be, serves as a moment of redemption of the cruelty that is in Twelfth Night. First, in a fairy-tale-esque moment, the siblings are brought together so they may achieve their previous familial closeness once more, and will not have to play a part to guarantee their safety in a strange land. Additionally, because the twins are a human representation of doubling brought together, they symbolize the unity that doubling so desires to culminate toward as a final target of the mimetic process. The nature of the doubled is a self-cognizant awareness of the separateness of its duality that consistently desire a unity; Sebastian and Viola onstage are the human depiction of this process. In order to resolve the disjointed nature of the doubled object, the individual producing this doubling must reconcile the two separate entities, and in the case of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare reconciles the doubling that is so present earlier in the play in the form of the cruel laughter and desires present in the play’s characters to annihilate the other with this final scene with the twins’ fulfilling reunion.

I believe that the play also serves as a metacritique of its own awareness toward doubling and its significance for both Girard’s and Baudelaire’s writings that have influenced this paper so much, and even the entire title of the play, Twelfth Night: or

What You Will, can serve as a lens in which to examine this claim. The subtitle includes a pun based on the doubling of the author’s first name, William Shakespeare, and serves as a reminder of the continual literary presence of an author in his or her own written text.

Although audiences and readers alike may become engrossed by the plotline of a literary work, the author’s existence is never out of sight or out of mind, because the literary work’s world is a mimetic creation of the author’s imagination, doubled in the written language of the text. In order to create a literary text, the author must partake in an act of mimetic imitation to navigate his or her own thoughts and translate them into the organized language that the written word requires; the writer’s creation is a culmination of verbal mimesis. In the case of this play’s subtitle, with the reminder of William

Shakespeare’s name, presence, and his own imitative ability to translate his own thoughts into words, serves a constant reminder to the audiences as to his abilities to successfully create his own construction of a world completely of his own. The reunion of the twins by the play’s conclusion represents the significance of the theatrical text, a further mimetic process in which actors imitate the words of the author, which are an example of authorial imitation themselves. The twins, as well as Malvolio, symbolize the importance of identification in theatre, as it is through this connection between the events in the play and drama as a genre that audiences may appreciate the mimetic nature of both the theatre and human interactions. Twelfth Night serves to offer an exploration of a major aspect of the human experience: as individuals, we view others depending on our similitude and likeness with one another, and through the process of mimetic desire, we imitate that which we desire in others. The process of identification with others is crucial

55 for an understanding of the significance of Girard’s writings about mimetic desires, because there must be some qualities of the desired other that we can identify with so that we may first begin to desire; however, there must be a certain degree of difference between the desiring subject and the desired object so there may be something different in the other for the subject to imitate. In these similarities and differences between others, individuals develop a sense of self, and through the differences, Baudelaire’s writings about the malicious laugh connect with Girard’s theses about mimetic desire. It is within the differences between individuals that the malicious laugh occurs, as the individual laughs at the caricature because he or she is grateful to be different than the caricature.

To conclude this paper and its study of the importance of the doubled, I wish to consider Jacques Derrida’s infamous text “White Mythology” and the ways in which he describes the significance of doubling in human language. Derrida’s thesis is about the failure of language and its inherent conflict that arises out of its doubled nature; the problem of language, whether in a Shakespeare play or in daily interactions with other individuals is that the nature of language is its existence that can only be present through the extended use of metaphor. Although philosophers such as Saint Augustine have argued that the name of an object directly corresponds with the object itself, as Derrida points out, all language is metaphor and the name of the object has nothing to do with the object named. The name serves only as a metaphor for the object, because there is no system in which the name directly corresponds with an object. However, the belief of the connectedness between the object and its name continues to perpetuate it, but because

56 language is inherently metaphorical, there is no escape from the doubling that must occur in language for it to continue.

As Derrida describes, language is always a twin to itself, as the name exists side by side with the object that is named by the utterance of the word. However, informed by

Girard’s writings about the significance of doubling within the mimetic desires of each individual, the act of imitation that produces the double also produces a desire to destroy, and as with the mimetic process, language also destroys. The destruction by language occurs as the speaker tears apart the inherent difference between the word and the object, metaphorically destroying the bond between the verbal twins of the name and the object; twins may look alike, such as Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, but they will never be the same. Similar to the physical relationship of twins, in language, the name and the object itself can never be the same, and Derrida describes this process as a type of coming apart of language, and the twin that dominates is the word itself. Girard’s thesis about the mimetic desires to imitate and destroy is not only reflected in human interactions but the medium in which they take place; not only do individual people participate in this circulation of imitation and annihilation, but the speech individuals use is a reflection of this violence. Mimetic desire and violence are present everywhere, and therefore are inescapable. Through the malicious laughter and the mimetic violence that take place in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare transfers this mimetic energy from the daily interactions of individual people to a stage setting. Because of the circulation of mimetic desires to imitate and destroy, Twelfth Night is an ideal framework in which to observe this human interface.

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