Forms Of Egotism In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

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There are many people who have a strong ego. Egotism is when someone thinks excessively about themself. The characters that Shakespeare gave strong egos to helped shape the story, by giving it depth. In the book “Twelfth Night”, Shakespeare presents a few characters with a strong ego. Egotism can have many forms and are shown through people in a very full of themselves kind of way. A form of egotism is present within Malvolio, Orsino, and Olivia throughout the book, their egotism affects their actions, motivations, and relationships. Malvolio is very self absorbed in imagining what he could have. Malvolio is strongly in love with Olivia but he is her butler so he cannot act on his feelings. He daydreams about what his life could be like with Olivia. But he found a letter supposedly from Olivia and it had M.O.A.I written on the letter and with his self absorbed ego, he assumed it was directed at him, ““M.O.A.I” This simulation is not as the former, and yet to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of these letters are in my name.”(Shakespeare 2.5, ll. 143-146). Malvolio sees these four letters and automatically thinks it means his name because each of those letters are in his name. With him believing that this letter is directed at him, he reads it and it is said to be from Olivia and she confessing her love towards Malvolio. Then, he follows the instructions in the letter and completely embarrasses himself just to win over Olivia. Malvolio has that very