“But mine is all as hungry as the sea and can digest as much. Make no compare between that love a woman can bear me and that I owe Olivia.” (2.4.100-103). Love is like an ocean in the mind of Orsino. His love for Olivia consumes him and everything around him, or so he says. Similarly, it is easy to get lost or even drown in. Orsino creates explains his love as something that cannot be controlled and is not stable. As we see throughout “Twelfth Night” Shakespeare is poking fun at the very idea of love while at the same time respecting its power. Some of his characters fall victim to the sea of love in this play. This simile criticizes the way that Orsino and others love, allude to how Shakespeare himself saw love as powerful like the sea but
Orsino quickly dismisses it by claiming that his love swallows him like the sea. Therefore, he is lost and is powerless at his loves will. He then continues, “Make no compare between that love a woman can bear me and the love I owe Olivia.”. This passage is much like the irony we see in many of Shakespeare 's comedy since the very person he is talking to loves him the way he described. With these two things in mind we see that love is blinding and can easily fool someone. Orsino is so caught up with Olivia he never sees Viola. Likewise, Viola is so in love with Orsino that she obeys him completely without ever revealing herself to him. These blind actions of love drive all the major action in the play. In fact, the longest portion of the play is Orsino sending his servant, Viola in disguise as Cesario, to beg Olivia for some form of love in return. However, Orsino never until the very end of the play actually goes over to Olivia’s house himself. If he is so deeply in love with her why doesn’t he go himself? It seems as though he loves the idea of her more than actually loving
As I said before it is the main driving force in the play. Viola is a great example of this as she is constantly trying to satisfy her love. Another instance in which Viola has relation to the sea and therefore our simile is that she was in a shipwreck. Her brother was in the same shipwreck and when he is saved by Antonio he says “But you sir, altered that, for some hour before you took me from the breach of the sea was my sister drowned.” (2.1.19-21). As we know Viola did not drowned in the sea that day. Perhaps Shakespeare is trying to tell us that she is currently drowning in a different sea, her sea of love for Orsino. This once again relates the sea to love. With her brother who she loved dearly gone Viola, unlike Olivia, tries to go and find a new love in Orsino. Viola’s love for Orsino is at least equal to Orsino’s for Olivia contrary to Orsino’s beliefs. She pretends to be a servant for him and never once tries to stop him from thrusting himself at Olivia in case what he said was true and he really did love Olivia. However, when it all comes down to it and Olivia is already married Viola finally comes clean to Orsino. When she does Orsino completely forgets about Olivia and starts to love Viola. This once again brings up the simile of the ever changing nature of the sea. We also see this simile hold true in Olivia. She starts off the play by telling us that she will mourn for seven years after the death of
The play opens with Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, expressing his deep love for the Countess Olivia. Meanwhile, the shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as a man and endeavors to enter the Duke’s service. Although she has rejected his suit, the Duke then employs Viola, who takes the name of Cesario, to woo Olivia for him. As the play continues, Cesario falls in love with the Duke, and Olivia falls in love with Cesario, who is really Viola disguised. Maria, Olivia’s servant woman, desires to seek revenge on Malvolio, Olivia’s steward. “To the delight of Sir Toby, Olivia’s uncle, and his friend Sir Andrew, Maria comes up with a plot to drop love letters supposedly written by Olivia in Malvolio’s path. When she does, they observe him, along with Fabian, another servant, as Malvolio falls for the bait. Believing that Olivia loves him, he makes a fool of himself” (Napierkowski 3).
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...
Naturally, one of the most reoccurring themes in Shakespeare is romantic love. It is perhaps not a coincidence that he put so much emphasis on this elusive and enigmatic emotion. In the Elizabethan age when he was writing, the arts were being explored more fervently, and thus raw human emotions began to surface in the mainstream culture. In Twelfth Night, love is a confusing and fickle thing, as demonstrated in the relationships between Duke Orsino and Olivia; Olivia and Viola/Curio; Malvolio and Olivia (she certainly has an effect on men doesn't she?); Duke Orsino and Viola/Curio. However, the characters seem to have a love-hate relationship with Cupid. Within the first line of the play, it is glorified: "If music be the food of love, play on..." (Duke Orsino, I:I). And while Olivia is annoyed with Orsino's affection, she craves Curio's.
Like most fairy tales that commence with "Once upon a time," William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy where a basic conflict is eventually resolved so that all the protagonists live "happily ever after." Similar to Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, Twelfth Night not only includes conflict resolution, but also a wedding in the final act meant to signify the good fortune that is bestowed on all the central characters at the conclusion of the play. Ultimately love is supposed to conquer all things. As displayed in fairy tales, love comes complete with chirping birds and a rainbow painted sky. Shakespeare, however, mocks love in its absurdity and accuses it of imperfection because love is a truth that is not perfect and does not always triumph. By examining the characters Olivia and Orsino, a reader will recognize that love is inconsistent and unconventional, and is capable of being genuine at times and egotistical at others; in order for love to be unconditional a level of openness and honesty must first occur. This level of sincerity is evident through the theme of gender bending.
As prescient and insightful as this evaluation may seem after considering the outcome of Twelfth Night’s romantic pairings, it reads as a very shallow perspective rather than any sort of wisdom – to the Duke, love is never permanent, lasting, or constant (just like the nature of the tides, it always changes). Duke Orsino has no concern whatsoever for Olivia’s feelings of grief after the loss of her brother – she is merely an object of his desires at the moment, and as his eventual courtship with Viola proves, he is extremely fickle in his affections. (Even before Viola’s disguise became apparent, Orsino showed some signs of attraction to the male Cesario – this raises a few questions about exactly how far his romantic indecisiveness
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.
Viola, as Cesario, manages to win the favour of Orsino He truly believes that she is a he. Orsino, still convinced of my majesty, believes that he can win the love of a woman, via a proxy. By having Viola merely read the words he has prepared, he thinks that Olivia will fall immediately in love with him. But while Orsino had his head in the clouds about his love, Viola is attempting to conceal from him, her love for him.
EXPOSITION: Orsino expresses his love for Olivia: While Olivia is mourning for her dead brother; Orsino falls in love with her. He is trying to get her to marry him but she refuses. Since she mourns for the loss of her brother for seven years, Olivia will not see anybody who seeks a relationship with her.
to get involved in a scuffle, for which Viola is unjustly blamed. Finally Sebastian and Viola are reunited, but only after they have already caused a large amount of chaos and confused everyone. It is only then that everyone begins to discover the extent of Viola's trickery. More disorder is created when Olivia, who Orsino is hopelessly in love with. with, falls for Cesario, who is secretly in love with Orsino.
This duality of love is established early within the play with Orsino’s commentary on love. In Orsino’s lines, he describes the “spirit of love” as being “quick and fresh” (1.1.9), and he continues to explain how love “…falls into abatement and low pride even in a minute” (1.1.13-14). With these lines, Shakespeare expresses how quickly love can alternate from an entity of joy to one of extreme depression. By employing these lines so early in the play, the vision of love as a force of exceeding strength is firmly planted within the reader’s subconscious, and Shakespeare has prepared the reader to fully grasp the central theme of the play.
Personification is used in this phrase, “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou, that, notwithstanding thy capacity receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,” (1.1.4-7) as a way of addressing love as a person. Orsino claims that love is “quick and fresh,” which is another way of saying that love is keen and eager to devour anything. The phrase also describes love as having the same “capacity” as the “sea”. Shakespeare is trying to say that love can eagerly devour anything that is of any size or capacity. It can also be interpreted that love can devour people as shown in the case of Sebastian and Olivia’s brother. Furthermore, the word “spirit” has a denotation of a supernatural being. The spirit of love might be Shakespeare’s way of referring to God. The addition of God in the play changes the way the play is seen, as God is believed to have the power to influence the fate of men. We see this influence play in the first act of the play where Viola has realized that her brother was devoured by the sea after the shipwreck. This sets the play in motion when viola disguises herself and interacted with other characters living in Illyria. In the end of the play, we see that the intrusion has changed the fate of Viola when she marries Orsino. God also has a part in influencing Olivia when he allowed death to devour her brother, leaving her with a lack of desire for men. This lack of
In Twelfth Night the relationships are anything but romantic. Shakespeare writes from the male point of view which implies an un-easy split between love and physical charm. In Twelfth night the romance is falsely produced by selfish desire. Duke Orsino and Viola stand out from the other relationships. By questioning the relationships between the other couples, Shakespeare highlights the true love between Viola and Orsino and the fake relationship of Malvolio and Olivia which is truly based on Malvolio’s desire of a higher status , despite his status and his personality , Malvolio tries to impress Olivia by dressing up in ridiculous clothes , which does far from his aim , and repulses Olivia.
The opening soliloquy of Act I Scene I, given by Duke Orsino, is another perfect example of Shakespeare using music to show the upcoming storyline of the play. At first, Orsino is using music as a metaphor that feeds the appetite of love. He speaks for a minute about his love for the music playing, and then changes abruptly by saying, “Enough; no more” (7). Already Shakespeare is foreshadowing Orsino’s fickleness when it comes to music which in turn stands for love. Of course, further into the play, it is shown that Orsino truly is fickle when it comes to love. As soon as he finds out that Cesario is in fact the woman Viola, he instantly forgets all the passion he had for Olivia and marries Viola.
Viola/Ceasario's disguise hides most of her past: the shipwreck, her lost brother, and the fact that she is a woman. Her identity now as a man, is to move on in life and get a job. Her love for Orsino is hidden with her original identity, as though she works for him as his servant. She is a very strong character in the play. "I prithee (and I’ll pay thee bounteously)/ Conceal me what I am, and be my aid/ For such disguise as haply shall become/ The form of my intent. I’ll serve this duke." (1.2.52-55). After the shipwreck and the loss of her brother, Viola decides to move on using a disguise as her shield. Viola’s secret love for Orsino is different than the way Olivia loves Ceasario. Olivia is in lo...
Throughout Twelfth Night, disguise and mistaken identity works as a catalyst for confusion and disorder which consistently contributes towards the dramatic comic genre of the play. Many characters in Twelfth Night assume disguises, beginning with Viola, who disguises herself as a man in order to serve Orsino, the Duke. By dressing his protagonist in male garments, Shakespeare creates ongoing sexual confusion with characters, which include Olivia, Viola and Orsino, who create a ‘love triangle’ between them. Implicitly, there is homoerotic subtext here: Olivia is in love with a woman, despite believing her to be a man, and Orsino often comments on Cesario’s beauty, which implies that he is attracted to Viola even before her male disguise is removed. However, even subsequent to the revealing of Viola’s true identity, Orsino’s declares his love to Viola implying that he enjoys lengthening the pretence of Vio...