Malvolio.....

I found an interesting quote from an interview with John Lithgow when he played Malvolio at RSC:

I think it's important that Malvolio have a couple of glorious giddy comic moments and that it really be a great comic performance. But I think the play really works best when the audience loathes him early on, and it also works best if you really do make sense of the fact that a terrible cruelty has been done to him—which is pretty unusual for a comic role. I enjoy having it be plenty funny and then jerk the chain. When I sat down with Neil, he asked me how I perceive Malvolio and I said as a
"not-so-distant relative of King Lear"
He is on the brink of madness to the point that he's scared himself that he's going to go mad, as you might expect from someone who is being kept in solitary confinement. There's real savagery there—a sense that the rest of his life is going to be defined by vengeance

A comparison of Malvolio to Lear. Now THERE'S comedy- pretty brilliant comparison. Two men striving to hold on to their sanity- and though Malvolio is funny, I think it's stronger if that dark room scene is not funny. It's meant to scare the audience, I think.