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Analyse the theme of love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
Analyse the theme of love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
Analyse the theme of love in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
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The Theme of Love in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare focuses strongly on the theme of love;
romantic love, friendship, brotherly and sisterly love, unrealistic
love and self-love. In this essay I am going to explore these aspects
and write about the different sides of love in the play, such as
humour and suffering. We find that in Twelfth Night love is a very
complicated thing and confusion often occurs.
At the beginning of the play we find Orsino talking dramatically of
his love for Olivia but actually seems to be in love with the idea of
love itself. This shows that his feelings are not actually true and
that he is very self-indulgent. He uses exaggerated language whilst
lying in rose beds, listening to music and talking constantly to his
servants of Olivia's beauty. He also compares his love to food and in
this quote he is saying how he hopes his appetite will simmer when it
all gets too much and he can no longer handle it.
Orsino says, 'If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of
it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die.' (I.i.1-3).
Orsino seems to be rather in love with himself and assumes that Olivia
will return his feelings for her.
He says 'Her sweet perfections with one selfsame King!' (I.i.39). Here
he compares himself to a King, which shows his self-love and
arrogance.
Viola's love is an example of true love in the play and she also shows
no self-love unlike Orsino, Olivia and Malvolio. In scene ii, Viola is
shipwrecked on the Illyrian coast and is distraught as her brother
Sebastian disappeared during the storm. She shows strong love for her
b...
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...s he is so close to Sebastian.
There is a lot of confusion and swapping of feelings in Twelfth Night.
I feel that the only true love is Viola's love for Orsino as this is
the only man she loves during the whole play and is the one she ends
up marrying. I think Olivia seems to fall in love too easily as she
thinks she can have any man. Also, Maria and Sir Toby seem to marry
just for the sake of it as they are close and have no one else to
really be with. Feste remains self-contained and is not driven by love
or ever gets distressed by it.
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare explores love with great detail and
explains it extremely well. I think that his thoughts on love and the
way in which he writes about all the tangles and confusion give a lot
of interest to the play making it a great play to read and also act
out.
When love is in attendance it brings care, faith, affection and intimacy. This is proved true in the spectacular play A Midsummer Night's Dream written by William Shakespeare. This play displays the facts about lust, hatred, jealousy and their roles in something powerfully desirable. It is entitled love. Love is present everywhere, in every form, in every condition and even when one least expects it.
the play. It looks at the person he is and the person he becomes. It
During the weeks leading up to matrimony, Olivia fell madly in love with Cesario, who though looks and sounds just like Sebastian, is truly Viola dressed as a man. Sebastian does not realize this as he meets Olivia for the first time. He is amazed that a woman of her statue and beauty would feel so strong for him and he wastes no time.... ... middle of paper ...
play but the only true or real love shown in the play is the love
the love he holds for her at the start of the play in his letter to
Viola quickly falls in love with Duke Orsino after meeting him, but she is not able to express her true feelings of love for two different reasons. First, Orsino is lusting after Olivia, so he is not open to the feelings of others. Orsino is so in love with Olivia’s beauty that he had built a wall of emotion around himself, and Viola was not able to penetrate this wall. More importantly, Viola is not Viola to Orsino; she is Cesario, who, disguised as a man, served Orsino as a eunuch. Although she greatly loves Orsino, Viola cannot openly express this love because she was invisible to him. If Viola does let the truth come out, Orsino will still not be able to love her because he is solely focused on gaining Olivia’s affection. Orsino does not love Viola because he does not see her as a woman in love with him but as a faithful servant, so Viola and her love for Orsino go unnoticed as Orsino delegates Viola to woo Olivia for himself. Viola, wishing she was the one whom Orsino loved, was deeply saddened by this: “I’ll do my best/To woo your lady: yet, a barful strife!/Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife” (Act I, Scene IV). Orsino made Viola his messenger to court Olivia, but Viola wishes she was the one whom Orsino was courting. Similarly to how Orsino is blinded by his infatuation with Olivia, the boy whom Swift is in love with is blinded by his love
Although Viola might be able to relate to Olivia's grief at first, her love for Orsino is so great that she cannot understand why Olivia would deny him. When Olivia expresses affectio...
However, Shakespeare also picks on love. Not only did Malvolio's confusion about his and Olivia's relationship prove to add to the comedy, but it rather showed how one can play with love, and use it for another's harm. Apart from this example, love is depicted as a light and lovely emotion.
...h the idea of being in love and enjoys making a spectacle of himself. His attraction to the ostensibly male Cesario injects sexual ambiguity into his character, and reveals that genuine love does exist within his character because he allows himself for that brief scene to be exposed and vulnerable. Olivia, like Orsino likes to wallow I her own misery, and also acts absurdly by falling for Cesario within a matter of a few moments of dialogue. Olivia seems to have no difficulty transporting her affections from one love interest to the next, however, suggesting that her romantic feelings, like most emotions in the play, are not profound. In all, Shakespeare used Twelfth Night to reveal that love can be found in unlikely places; in order for love to be a genuine act it must be a selfless; and love undoubtedly requires patience and endurance through times of absurdity,.
Orsino is seen to be very much in love with Olivia. He seems to be so
Finally, Olivia officially tells Viola (Caesario) that she loves him after Viola delivers another message to Olivia. Olivia tells Caesario that she has been in love with him ever since she first saw him, and that she cannot hold it anymore. She cares not about what her society would think about her for falling in love with a person not from her class. The reader knows that Viola is not interested at all in Olivia since she is in love with Orsino. Lady Olivia’s love for Caesario illustrates a universal truth about life that when someone is in love, he/she will do whatever it takes to show the other person that they love them. They are willing to sacrifice everything they’ve got for their love. In this case, Olivia is sacrificing her social status and reputation.
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," William Shakespeare explains the difficulties of the nature of love. Both false love and true love prevail in the end, leading the reader to come to the conclusion that all types of love can triumph. Hermia and Lysander represent the existence of a "true love", while Helena and Demertrius represent the opposite extreme. Shakespeare presents the idea that love is unpredictable and can cause great confusion. Love is something that cannot be explained, it can only be experienced. Shakespeare challenges us to develop our own idea of what love truly is.
Because of this confusing love triangle, some of the characters seem to view love as a curse. They also claim to suffer painfully from being in love or from the “pangs” of unrequited love. In Act 1 scene 5, Olivia describes love as a “plague” from which she suffers terribly. In Act 1 scene 1, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot. Another example of the characters not “liking” love is in Act 2 scene 2 when Viola says “My state is desperate for my master’s love.” This quote relates to the violence in Act 5 scene 1 when Orsino threatens to kill Cesario because he thin...
The theme of love is brought up over and over again in the play. It is
Twelfth Night consists of a large number of love triangles, however many characters are too indulged in love that they are blind to the untrue, and the weakness of their relationship, they are deceived by themselves and many people around them ( ex. Malvolio is tricked by Sir Andrew, Feste ,Sir Toby and Maria),but there are certain incidents where the love is true and two characters feel very strongly about one another. In the play, Viola and Orsino have the most significant relationship. The way they interact with each other causes the complexity on which the play is all about, their relationship turns from strangers to friends then lovers .In the First Act Viola is not honest with Orsino because she disguises herself as a male servant named Cesario in order to get closer to the duke. Orsino. Orsino quickly trusts Cesario and sends him to Olivia to declare Orsinos Love for her, the girl he most dearly loves. This quick bond is the fast example of their relationship. At the beginning of the play, Viola thinks her brother (Sebastian) is dead (after they’re deadly boat crash, where they get separated) when actually he is alive and thinks she is dead, Viola always seems to have a part missing from her which shows her bond with Sebastian is strong, and a part of her but in a brotherly/sisterly way rather than a proper relationship like viola and orsino, At the end of the play they meet and both fall in love , Viola with Orsino and Sebastian with Olivia.