Sir Toby Belch

Sir Toby Belch
Twelfth Night character
Oil painting of Sir Toby Belch painted by George Henry Hall
Created by William Shakespeare
Source Gl'ingannati
Information
Family Olivia (niece)
Associate(s) Sir Andrew Aguecheek
Role Secondary Character

Sir Toby Belch is a character in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.

Character

Sir Toby is an ambiguous mix of high spirits and low cunning. He first appears in the play's third scene, when he storms onto the stage the morning after a hard night out, complaining about the sombre melancholy that hangs over his niece's household. "What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus? I'm sure care's an enemy to life." This immediately establishes Sir Toby at the opposite pole from the languishing melancholy which dominated the first scene (including Orsino's speech, "If music be the food of love..."), identifying him as a force for vitality, noise and good cheer, as his name suggests. But it also raises the question of how far the audience is expected to sympathize with him. Is his criticism of his niece a justified statement of the old truism that "life must go on", or an insensitive blunder by a hungover old drunkard?

At the beginning Sir Toby appears to be friends with another character, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, a guest of Olivia, Sir Toby's niece. However as the play progresses, it transpires that Sir Toby is just taking advantage of Sir Andrew's riches, one of the more sinister plots of the generally comedic play.

His tormenting of the steward Malvolio is similarly double-edged in its tone of "sportful malice" (V,1). The plot against Malvolio is generally considered a comic highlight of the play, but critics have often complained of its cruelty.[1] The play ends with the quarrel still unresolved, and Olivia warning that Malvolio "hath been most notoriously abused" (V,1).

Whatever his faults, no character study can accuse Sir Toby of snobbishness. Though he taunts Malvolio with the demand "Art any more than a steward?" (II,3), he only does so after Malvolio has threatened him with being turned out if he doesn't reform his ways. Indeed part of Malvolio's complaint is that Sir Toby and his companions are not acting like noblemen by drinking and singing but like "tinkers" in an "alehouse". His appreciation of Maria pronounced (Mariah), though couched in terms that might not please every woman: "She's a beagle, true-bred" (II,3), and eventual marriage, shows that he thinks his title of no particular account compared to his love for her.

See also

  • Twelfth Night
  • Characters in the Twelfth Night
  • Characters in Works of Shakespeare

Notes

  1. ↑ See the discussion in William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, or What you Will, ed. by Keir Elam (London: Arden, 2008), pp. 8-9.

References


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.