The positioning of this speech and its venomous tone is meant, without doubt, to prime the audience, and to turn the audience’s neutral feelings towards Malvolio to ones of somewhat unjustified hatred considering the small amount that we have seen of him in the play so far.
It is not just the under-plotters that mock Malvolio. His boss, Olivia, also criticizes Malvolio, but this time, due to the difference in status, to his face. She says that he is, “sick of self love.” Malvolio’s reaction to this statement shows one of three possible things about his character. Either he has enough self control to simply say nothing, demonstrating the traditional, astute, hard faced, and faithful servant Malvolio, or it could be used to show his complete, blissful isolation from the outer world, too busy wallowing in the self love that Olivia was talking about, or finally, and my personal choice, Malvolio could laugh the remark off to Olivia’s face, but when she turns away show his inner hurt, at the malicious remark that had come from the mouth of the woman he loves, by facial expressions directed at the audience, thus showing a more sensitive and loving Malvolio which he is afraid to show to others.
Malvolio is a very versatile character and can be played in numerous different ways ranging from the gloriously funny, but not offensively, vain Malvolio, to the manically self righteous extremist puritan who deserves every bit of what comes his way.
I feel that the manner in which the character of Malvolio is played all depends on the reaction you want to achieve from the audience: either you must see Malvolio as the victim of Sir Toby, or Sir Toby as the victim of Malvolio. I have chosen the reaction of the sympathy for Malvolio to tie in with him being a member of the puritanical minority. But for this to work the character of Sir Toby must become one of nastiness otherwise the relationship between the two will cause the audience to be confused and not know who to feel aggrieved for. In order not to be nasty Malvolio ought to be vacuous and vain, and , going back to an earlier point be totally and blissfully self contained in his own little world and should let everything wash over his head. Playing Malvolio like this up until he is released from the prison will help to make his character more three dimensional because of the out burst he should make when he delivers his famous final line at the end of the play.
When Malvolio delivers his line, “I’ll be reveng’d on the whole pack of you,” it is one of the most important moments in the plays closing moments. The actor must make contrast with the usual Malvolio