Feste and Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

Feste and Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

In Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night, there are many very different

characters. Feste and Malvolio are two good examples of characters,

very different from each other. One is someone who acts like a puritan

and scolds others when they do not act in the same way, whereas the

other is someone who gets scolded for being clever with his words and

for enjoying singing. This does not mean I would like the play more if

one of the two characters were not in the play. Both characters add

different things to the play.

In the first scene where we see Feste and Malvolio together Feste says

'better a witty fool than a foolish wit.' This comment shows some of

Feste's dislike towards Malvolio as it seems to be directed towards

the steward, although he does use himself in the comparison, as Feste

is obviously the witty fool and Malvolio, the foolish wit (I believe

this because the comment seemed to be directed towards Malvolio and

this seems to be Feste's opinion of Malvolio). I think that at this

point Feste knew, that because Malvolio uses pretences that he is

unable hold up, such as being a puritan but being very proud and vain

at the same time, he had the possibility of being the target of

something that he would not notice or be able to get out of if he did

because he was a fool in mind rather than in occupation. I, too, would

agree that it is better to be a clever fool than to be someone who

believes himself or herself to be clever, when actually many people

know you are a greater fool than the people around you. This is what

Feste had noticed about Malvolio.

Throughout the play Feste and Malvolio show their characters to be

very different. The largest difference between them is that Malvolio

shows himself to be a strict puritan (at least on the outside) whereas

Feste is, in every way, against puritanical beliefs. He says that he