In this essay I am going to look at the relevance of III.iv in Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night. Some of the main themes in Twelfth Night is deception, madness and especially love as most of the characters in the play experience this emotion. I am going to talk about the comedy with Maria's letter to Malvolio, the fight with a 'foolish knight' and the importance of family relationships. This scene is where many of the links and plots of the story meet up and shows how dramatic irony is continued from past scenes. There are many significant characters I will be talking about in this essay for example; Sir Andrew who is described as possessing the 'gift of a coward and Malvolio who is 'a kind of puritan.
             In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare shows the audience Malvolio is a character that you can feel sorry for but during the time this novel was written you are not meant to feel sorry for him and he deserves whatever he gets. In I.v, we are first introduced to Malvolio and we find out he is Olivia's personal servant, who she trusts. When they find out a weird man is at the gate, Olivia tells Malvolio to dismiss him, we know this when Shakespeare says 'she is sick or not at home what you will to dismiss it.' In III.iv, it is suggesting that Olivia is saying Malvolio is 'sad and civil and suits well for a servant with my fortunes' which shows they have a strong professional relationship and have mutual respect for each other.
             When Malvolio appears on stage in III.iv, we are expecting to see Malvolio look like a complete fool with yellow stockings instead of his normal plain clothes as he usually wears ordinary black and white clothes as he is a puritan but he wears these clothes to impress the love of his life, Olivia. In Elizabethan times puritans were ridiculed as they were against theatres and in the novel Maria says 'sometimes he is a kind of puritan', in II.iii. In ...