![]() ![]() Ashenden is a novelist, and as a boy knew the younger Driffield. ![]() Maugham's narrator is William Ashenden (his alter ego - he already appeared in ASHENDEN, Maugham's fictional account of his secret service work in World War I, which became Hitchcock's THE SECRET AGENT). Somerset Maugham, with his delicious sense of irony, looks at the effects in the literary world of the death of that grand old man of letters Edward Driffield. To fully appreciate their success and greatness we should know what they were really like - but there are those hangers on who (like Malvolio) will deny the human element in order to shine up the fame in the hope of catching some of it themselves. But they were humans actually, and they had failures and foibles. ![]() We glorify people in the world as great figures, and there are those around them that build them into demigod like figures. The quote is the basis for the thrust of this novel. ![]() "Just because thou art virtuous shall there be no cakes and ale!", he throws out at Malvolio. At one point, Sir Toby Belch is tired at the Puritan hypocrite Malvolio, who is quite the spoilsport regarding Sir Toby and his antics with the maid Maria and his friend Sir Andrew Aguecheek. CAKES AND ALE is a title based on a line from Shakespeare's TWELFTH NIGHT. ![]()
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