SOURCE: "Malvolio in Twelfth Night," in Players of Shakespeare: Essays in Shakespearean Performance, edited by Philip Brockbank, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 41-66.

In the following essay, Sinden analyzes his performance as Malvolio for Barton's 1969-70 production of Twelfth Night.

Why is it so difficult to record in words a theatrical performance? Critics such as Hazlitt, Coleridge, Agate and Tynan have given us their own responses to certain performances; and we have some heavily annotated scripts of actors and actresses such as Sarah Siddons and Ellen Terry. But I cannot recall an attempt by an actor to analyse his own performance, to set down what he thought and did, what he tried to achieve, where and how he succeeded, move by move. That is what I am attempting here. Not that I think my interpretation of Malvolio in 1970 was definitive—no Shakespearean performance ever is. I do think it...