Introduction

Summary

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Act ii, scene v, chambermaid Maria plays an epistolary trick on her fellow servant. She forges a text to make the pompous steward Malvolio believe that his fantasy of rising above his station and marrying their mistress Olivia has become reality.¹ The dupe is imagining just this as he comes into the garden where the deceptive document, which will literally spell out his daydream, has been planted. Maria and her accomplices, Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and Fabian, watch from a hiding place and comment as the spectacle unfolds. It all begins the moment Malvolio picks up the text and reads the address written on its exterior (ii.v.69–80)