Although Malvolio is not present onstage in the previous exchange between Viola and Olivia, he, like other servants, are within earshot, awaiting Olivia. I would assume he’s heard the bits he wants to hear, basically that Olivia doesn’t like Cesario. In the first exchange between Malvolio and Olivia earlier in the scene, Malvolio erringly puts Cesario’s foot in Olivia’s door. Now, in the reprise, he’s glad that Olivia seems to wish to spurn him.
I imagine that Malvolio nearly completes Olivia’s pentameter in her previous soliloquy, “What ho, Malvolio,” except he stumbles a bit, perhaps daydreaming about how much better he himself is to Cesario. There’s a very fatal ego in Malvolio already present even in his two lines in Act 1’s finale.
Malvolio: Here, Madam, at your service.
Olivia: Run after that same peevish Messenger
The County’s man: He left this ring behind him,
Would I, or not: tell him, I’ll none of it.
Desire him not to flatter with his Lord,
Nor hold him up with hopes, I am not for him.
If that the youth will come this way tomorrow,
I’ll give him reasons for’t: hie thee Malvolio.
Notice the trace of uncertainty in the eleventh syllable, as Olivia flat out lies in the second line, in the feminine ending. The following two eleven syllable lines (with ending words marked in bold) have masculine endings, as she’s rather certain about the thought there–she’s not at all for Orsino!
Malvolio: Madam, I will.
Malvolio exits swiftly, to catch up to Cesario, and also because he’s maybe slightly jubilant–however happy someone like Malvolio can be!
Olivia: I know not what, and fear to find
Mine eye too great a flatterer for my mind:
Fate, show thy force, our selves we do not owe,
What is decreed, must be: and be this so.
Olivia also swiftly begins her soliloquy, right after Malvolio’s 4 syllable line. It’s in a fluid rush, like the flow of love in this act. She swoons and defers to fate. What else can she do?
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