Sir Toby

• Sir Toby Belch is Olivia's Uncle
• Olivia is referred to as Sir Toby's "Niece" but his precise relationship isn't clear as she refers to him as "cousin" which is more general
• Sir Toby Belch's name refers to over-indulgence and in most of his scenes he is drunk or drinking
• While Sir Toby relies on Olivia's goodwill to stay in her household, he exploits Sir Andrew by encouraging him to woo the countess
• Sir Toby marries Maria at the end of the play
• It has been suggested that in the characterisation of ST, Shakespeare was trying to recreate his most successful comic conception, the fat and disreputable knight of the Henry IV plays - Falstaff
• Although Sir Toby is presented as Jolly, it may be a case of over-compensation for a man who has lost a nephew (Olivia's dead brother)
• Sometimes Sir Toby has been played as a man having one last fling before settling into a more respectable old age, for example, in Feste's song the references at time passing in the drinking scene
• If Sir Toby is having a last fling before old age, his marriage with Maria is part of the "last chance" mood
• "Confine? I'll confine myself no finer than I am"


  Confinement, modesty and order are antipathetic to Toby's excessive and disorderly conduct, words and language are not in his control when drunk, rejects authority of clock-time and by extension the limitation of time itself, his swaggering excesses are punished at the end of the play when Sebastian wounds him leaving him ironically to berate drunkenness
• Don't say he was an alcoholic in exam