Below is my Director’s interpretation of the first part of Twelfth Night, Act 1 Scene 3. For a marked-up/annotated script, see here.

I see Maria and Toby’s opening conversation in this scene as very sexually charged, perhaps with a slight bit of repression only from Maria. It’s night; Toby is very drunk. Maria tries justifying how Toby should come in earlier and should not drink so much by saying her Lady Olivia disapproves of it. Toby is Olivia’s cousin. Family members often take such requests of care from others less seriously, so it seems every time Maria (who’s only a servant) tries invoking Olivia’s request as justification, Toby pushes it off.

Toby: What a plague means my niece to take the death of her
brother thus? I am sure care’s an enemy to life.

Maria: By my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier
anights. Your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions
to your ill hours.

Toby: Why, let her except, before excepted.

Maria: Ay, but you must confine yourself within the modest
limits of order.

Toby: ‘Confine‘? I’ll confine myself no finer than I am.
These clothes are good enough to drink in, and so be
these boots too; an they be not, let them hang
themselves in their own straps!

The words in bold above can be read with heavy emphasis on the sexual interpretation. “Death” is Elizabethan slang for orgasm. Toby’s inebriated as he enters the scene. Maria already has some affinity towards him, and notice that she emphasizes the words “cum” and “nights” and scolds Toby for his “ill hours.” Maria mentions he should confine himself, and lecherous Toby replies (metaphorically) saying, “I’ll take off my clothes whenever I want.”

Maria: That quaffing and drinking will undo you. I heard my
lady talk of it yesterday, and of a foolish knight
that you brought in one night here, to be her wooer.

Maria continues the metaphor of stripping Toby. But, once again, the trend to note is that Maria’s lines mention Olivia only as an ending–as if an afterthought. Perhaps Maria, a mere servant, is hiding her affections towards Toby by attempting to say it is really Olivia who cares?

Toby: Who, Sir Andrew Aguecheek?

Maria: Ay, he.

Toby: He’s as tall a man as any’s in Illyria.

Maria: What’s that to th’purpose?

Toby: Why, he has three thousand ducats a year.

Toby’s drunk, so perhaps the truth flows more freely from his mouth. It comes straight out. He sticks with Aguecheek for purposes of money.

Maria: Ay, but he’ll have but a year in all these ducats.
He’s a very fool, and a prodigal.

Toby: Fie, that you’ll say so! He plays o’th’viol-de-gamboys,
and speaks three or four languages word for word
without book, and hath all the good gifts of nature.

While we will later discover that Toby would openly lie for Andrew, this can also be interpreted as Toby trying to find justifications for himself for hanging out with Andrew (other than for ducats). Toby should spout the lies naturally–and yet the lies should sound like lies.

Maria: He hath indeed, almost natural: for besides that he’s
a fool, he’s a great quarreler, and but that he hath
the gift of a coward to allay the gust he hath in
quarreling, ’tis thought among the prudent he would
quickly have the gift of a grave.

Toby: By this hand, they are scoundrels and subtractors that
say so of him. Who are they?

Maria: They that add, moreover, he’s drunk nightly in your
company.

Maria belittles Andrew as a drunkard who doesn’t cause much trouble because he’s a coward; Toby reacts with chivalry, demanding to know who has debased his friend. Maria wittily replies that it’s the people he hangs out with who gave Andrew away. Now, Toby would continue the banter, taking blame away from his drunken friends, directing the conversation finally with respect to Olivia:

Toby: With drinking healths to my niece. I’ll drink to her
as long as there is a passage in my throat and drink
in Illyria. He’s a coward and a coistrel that will not
drink to my niece till his brains turn o’th’toe like a
parish top. What, wench? Castiliano vulgo, for here
comes Sir Andrew Agueface!

Ironic that he drinks (the drink that would undo him) with the purpose of toasting Olivia. And he’d turn all his bad qualities that Maria had been scolding him about into an alternative way of paying his respects to Olivia! So, we go full circle. Maria begins this exchange by citing her (demanding) concern as Olivia’s, and Toby ends by claiming his actions are actually for Olivia.t

Tags: Maria, Toby