Self Love In Twelfth Night

Love is a timeless topic. It will forever be the theme of popular entertainment and source of confusion for men and women alike. No one understands this better than William Shakespeare, and he frequently explores this complex emotion in his plays. In "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" Shakespeare cleverly reveals the fickle and inebriating aspects of love through his mischievous character Puck.

For instance, when he finds the love letter that is supposedly written by Olivia, confessing her love for him, and telling him to smile, wear yellow stockings and go cross-gartered, he says, “I will smile, I will do every thing that thou wilt have me.” (2, 5, 165-6). He thinks the letter is from countess Olivia, who he is in love with, and believes that the greatness of being her husband is about to be given to him. Before finding the letter, he wanders around in Olivia’s garden and dreams about himself “To be Count Malvolio!” (2, 5, 32). He imagines how the other characters of the play would serve him, which again shows that Malvolio thinks he stands above everyone. In addition, when Malvolio is hailed by Olivia, he arrives smiling, wearing yellow stockings and cross-gartered, which makes Olivia think he has gone insane: “Why, this is very midsummer madness.” (3, 4, 51). Consequently, in this part of the play Malvolio’s inside does not match his outside. Throughout the play he is a grave character, that detests other persons having fun, so his actions of smiling and wearing strange dress make him look like a madman, which is why he gets locked up in Olivia’s basement. Towards the end, he returns to his initial manner, and declares that he will “be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!”, referring to the characters that tricked him into believing that the letter was

In the play “Twelfth Night”, Malvolio is a steward for Lady Olivia. He’s very in love with her and only she has to deal with it. On the other hand, Olivia is plainly not in love with him; she is in love with Cesario. He tries everything to try and win her love but he also has a negative attitude towards others. Malvolio’s behavior is unacceptable and other people shouldn’t have to deal with it.

Most of the major characters in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night experience some form of love or marriage. Whether it’s unrequited like with Antonio and Malvolio, or it is something seemingly unattainable like with Duke Orsino. Regardless, it is clear that love is prevalent as one of the central themes Shakespeare seems to emphasize in Twelfth Night. With that, we see him communicate different interpretations and feelings regarding the subject. He does this with the medium of melodramatic characters. In this essay, I will elaborate on the opinions of love that Shakespeare communicates through one of the leading characters:

In William Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night, love as the cause of suffering is one of the most prominent theme of the story. Even though this play ends in love and wedded bliss, Shakespeare also shows us that love can also cause pain. The characters often view love as a curse, something that is thrust upon you and you cannot easily or willing escape. Examples include Malvolio’s love for Olivia, the love triangle between Olivia, Duke Orsino, and Viola as Cesario, and Antonio’s crush on Sebastian. There are countless occasions where unrequited love for another results in heartbreak and sorrow.

Malvolio?s conceitedness was broken and then he sees that he did not truly love Olivia, but was only flattered that he had been loved by someone so beautiful and young.

Twelfth Night, written by William Shakespeare, is a comedy about love. Love can be things that are not always what they seem and or it can be foolish and it can also be a weakness. Foolishness and weaknesses are the most of what we see in the play, Twelfth Night, the audience sees that, yes there is a tragedy but, that is not what the play revolves around. The audience sees that later on in the play all the love that is being described is foolish as well as something a child would do. The love that is being described can not happen for a certain reason and when the characters find out that someone loves them and they were not just saying that they would do something for them, the character just sort of accepts it and let fate intervene and take place. Everyone in the world has a weakness or have done something foolish in their life. It only counts

Deception and disguise are two key themes in Shakespeare's 'Twelfth Night'. As in most comedies, Twelfth Night celebrates different forms of disguise and deception in order to make the play more entertaining. It also develops a strong connection between the main plot (with Viola, Orsino, Olivia, and the others) and the sub-plot (involving Sir Andrew, Sir Toby, Malvolio, and Maria). Disguise and deception appear in many different ways throughout the story.

The English Review says that “love is not always, ‘the real thing’.” In Twelfth Night, there are three characters whose false love is majorly evident: Malvolio, Sir

There is a certain degree of expectation with the genre of comedy that despite whatever difficulties appear within the play, by the end these will be resolved and the play will have a traditional happy-ending with a marriage or a celebration in the final scene. The “Twelfth Night” is no exception to this rule. Despite problems of confused identities and sexualities, the play ends with marriage for the major characters because they “have learned enough about their own foolishness to accept it wisely, and their reward, as it should be, is marriage.”(Schwartz 5140). There is a resolution of harmony to a certain extent and an endorsement of romantic love yet despite the happiness evident in the last scene, there are many elements in the play

Yet the atmosphere of the play may render Malvolio’s aspirations less unreasonable than they initially seem. The feast of Twelfth Night, from which the play takes its name, was a time when social hierarchies were turned upside down. That same spirit is alive in Illyria: indeed, Malvolio’s antagonist, Maria, is able to increase her social standing by marrying Sir Toby. But it seems that Maria’s success may be due to her willingness to accept and promote the anarchy that Sir Toby and the others embrace. This Twelfth Night spirit, then, seems to pass by Malvolio, who doesn’t wholeheartedly embrace the upending of order and decorum but rather wants to blur class lines for himself alone.

This is the set up of many situations, such as the meeting of Olivia and Viola in which Olivia falls very quickly in love with Cesario ‘even so quickly may one catch the plague’ this is an example of unrequited love, or the ‘melancholy lover’ a melancholy lover is a lover which suffers from his/her love. The other example of unrequited love is again because of mixed Identities, Viola the other ‘melancholy lover’ in the play, loves Orsino but Orsino cannot return that love because he thinks she is a man so never would think that she loves him, but she also cannot reveal her love to him because she would then have to reveal her true identity, which cannot be revealed until the right time. Cesario/Viola talks about how she knows how Orsino feels because “My father had a daughter loved a man,” Viola talks to Orisno about how her ‘sister’ loved a man that

As an individual falls in love, they believe that they are ready to sacrifice anything for their loved ones. In reality, this is inaccurate because research by Grant Hilary Brenner M.D, a psychiatrist said that love is created by own desires . Romantic love in the play Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare is a selfish act. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/experimentations/201710/we-project-romantic-partners-our-own-desires-cheat

himself just to suit his outlook on the situation. For example, the play he twists Olivia's words around to make it seem like she likes his yellow cross-gartered tights when in reality she dislikes them. Sir Toby just considers himself and no one else, not even his companions. He ignores Maria's notification about drinking into the night, and he continues to push Sir Andrew and Olivia to court. Even though he believes that Sir Andrew doesn't have a chance. Olivia considers the all-inclusive community around her, yet she furthermore assumes that no man is meriting her brilliance. She assumes that she is "all that," and that no one can organize her. For Shakespeare to incorporate this sort of just a single was most likely to demonstrate that Malvolio who thinks excessively of himself isn't right about Olivia cherishing him.

Comedy, in the Elizabethan era, often included themes of wit, mistaken identity, love, and tragedy, all tied up with a happy ending. These themes are prevalent in William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, a comical play that explores the pangs of unrequited love and the confusion of gender. Love is a powerful emotion that causes suffering, happiness, and disorder throughout the play. The play also demonstrates the blurred lines of gender identity, which ties into the modern day debate on sexuality and gender identity. The main characters in the play, Viola, Olivia, and Orsino are connected by a love triangle, each person pursuing an unrequited love. Suffering from love and the fluidity of gender are the prevalent themes explored throughout the play and intertwined with Viola, Olivia, and Orsino.