SOURCE: A review of Twelfth Night, in Plays and Players, Vol. 17, No. 1, October, 1969, pp. 20-23.

But tell me true' asks Feste of Malvolio 'are you not mad indeed or doyou but counterfeit? A strange emphasis, and not, I think, one which many actors would employ of their own accord. It jerked me out of the stupor into which I had been cast by the slackest Sir Topas scene in my recollection, and set me wondering what Feste could possibly mean by it. A reference to bis own masquerade as Master Parson perhaps, but Malvolio is hardly in a position to see the joke. Anyway that seemed much too simple, too specific. There was about the delivery the weighty self-consciousness which Royal Shakespeare actors are apt to signal that though they cannot quite fit this reading into their characterisation they will do it this way to oblige the...