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ham's recognition of the importance of the role of Malvolio is supported by other early evidence. Sir Henry Herbert records that on Candlemas Day (February 2), 1623, 'Malvolio was acted at Court by the King's Servants.' The title Twelfe Night in the copy of the Second Folio owned by Charles I was altered to Malvolio. In the Commendatory verses which Leonard Digges prefixed to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's poems are these lines:

The importance of Malvolio as a stage-character is thus a long established tradition. The popularity of Twelfth Night at court as well as with the general public is attested not merely by the reference in Herbert's Record but by a manuscript entry of the Audit Office which shows that John Hemminge, later one of two editors of the First Folio, presented the comedy before James I on Easter Monday, 1618.

After the reopening of the theatres in 1660, Twelfth Night resumed its place on the English stage. Pepys gives three characteristic references to it in his Diary under dates of September 11, 1661, January 6, 1662–3, and January 20, 1668–9. On the first occasion the attraction of a 'new play' was irresistible though he 'took no pleasure at all in it' and 'went home with my mind troubled for my going thither, after my swearing to my wife that I would never go to a play without her.' His freer judgment on the second occasion held that the comedy was 'acted well, though it be but a silly play, and not related at all to the name or day.' John Downes in his Roscius Anglicanus (1708) says that the play 'had mighty Success by its well Performance'—with Thomas Betterton as Sir Toby, and Harris as Sir Andrew—but declares that 'it was got up on purpose