The Aspects of Love in Twelfth Night

The Aspects of Love in Twelfth Night

The main theme in Twelfth Night is love. It is announced at the

beginning of the play ‘If music be the food of love play on’ and from

this you know that love will be a main aspect in Twelfth Night.

In Elizabethan time ‘love’ as we know it today was very different. You

could not love anyone outside of your social status, marriages were

almost always arranged on how the social status could improve the

current standing of one partner i.e. one partner had lots of money,

land or influence.

In Twelfth Night there are many different kinds of love to list a few,

filial love, unrequited love, Lust, Courtly Love, True Love,

Ambitious/Selfish love. There are many good examples of all these

types of love throughout the play.

There are seven different characters that share a filial bond of love.

Sebastian and Viola they are twin brother and sister and have never

really been apart. There very strong bond is shown when Viola thinks

she has lost her brother she displays a lot of grief and remorse for

her ‘dead’ brother “O my poor brother!” Another two characters that

display Filial Love is Sebastian and Antonio “If you will not murder

me for my love, let me be your servant.” Antonio and Sebastian fought

in many wars together and have become very close friends. The other

two characters are Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew. Sir Toby wants Sir

Andrew to woo Olivia because this would secure his place in Olivia’s

household; Sir Toby is using his friendship and dumb wittedness of his

friend to bend him to do his bidding. The final example of filial love

is the love Olivia has for her dead brother, she is so ...

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acquaintance.” This is a display of Malvolio’s Puritanism where he

thinks he is better and purer than everyone else. Sir Toby cannot

disobey as Malvolio will own the land, money and her house as in

Elizabethan times the man owned everything the woman previously owned.

Another similarity to Much Ado about nothing is that Malvolio is

tricked in a similar way to how Benedict and Beatrice are tricked

except the outcomes are very different the one is a happy ending for

the couple where as Malvolio is thought to be mad and locked up.

Traditionally in a Shakespearian comedy all the “loose ends” are all

tied up at the end and this is where the last type of love to be

displayed in the book true love. All the characters that are meant to

end up together do Olivia with Sebastian, Orsino with Viola and Sir

Toby with Maria.