William Hazlitt, a famous Romantic writer of the early 1800s, wrote charmingly of these marvelous comic characters; he was delighted by their contrasting characters. Sir Toby was sanguine, red-nosed, burly, a practical joker, and always ready for "a hair of the dog that bit him." He is a fitting opposite to Sir Andrew (pale as though he had the ague), with thin, smooth, straw-colored hair. Hazlitt was deeply amused by this wretched little nincompoop who values himself on his dancing and fencing, being quarrelsome yet chicken-hearted, boastful and yet timid in the same breath, and grotesque in every movement. Sir Andrew is a mere echo and shadow of the heroes of his admiration, born to be the sport of his associates, their puppet, and the butt of their jokes; and while he is so brainless as to think it possible he may win the love of the beautiful Olivia, he has at the same time an inward suspicion of his own stupidity which now and then comes in refreshingly: "Methinks sometimes I have no more wit than a Christian or an ordinary man has; but I am a great eater of beef, and, I believe, that does harm to my wit." He often does not understand the simplest word he hears, and he is such a mere reflex and a parrot that "I too" is, as it were, the watchword of his existence. Sir Toby sums him up in the phrase: "For Andrew, if he were opened, and you find so much blood in his liver as will clog the foot of a flea, I'll eat the rest of the anatomy."
And of Maria, Hazlitt writes: "We have a sneaking kindness for Maria and her rogueries. She fits in with Sir Toby Belch's view of the world, and it is true that this 'youngest wren of nine' and 'as pretty a piece of Eve's flesh as any in Illyria' later married him. They are both opposed to Malvolio because they represent the "cakes and ale" of which, because he was a virtuous puritan, Malvolio so disapproved.
