Love Triangles In Twelfth Night

1123 Words3 Pages

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare is considered to be one of his greatest romantic comedies, and has been praised for his cunning and witty use of disguised identity. Taking place in a land known as Illyria, the romantic comedy centers around the protagonist, Viola, who disguises herself as a male for her safety after a shipwreck, in which she assumes her brother has died. While working in the house of Duke the Orsino under the name Caesario, she falls in love with him, and also wishes to win the affections of the Duke, who is desperately in love with the Countess Olivia. A number of love triangles form, which results in various forms of live being shown through each of the play’s main characters. Twelfth Night plays upon its main characters, showing them each as rather unsatisfactory lovers, with the exception of Viola, who is the embodiment of true love. Despite the fact that the play ends happily, each of the main characters find themselves feeling some sort of pain, and view love of as a type of curse. Many characters suffer from lovesickness, and also endure the pain of unrequited love. In this essay I will dissect each of the main characters in Twelfth Night as lovers, and explain why each of them is more absurd than the rest. …show more content…

The reader can see this by the quote, “If music be the food of love, play on, /Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, /he appetite may sicken and so die.”(1.1.1-3) His complete love for Olivia makes him lovesick and desperate. From another quote, “Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers” (1.1.41-42) tells us that his surroundings need to be very romantic to be able to love. “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou,” (1.1.9) Orsino is saying that lovers such as him are so hungry for love that other things in life seem to lose their value. This tells us that his love for Olivia is a self-absorbed

Open Document