True Love In Twelfth Night By William Shakespeare

     Unlike the other characters in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", Viola's feelings of love are genuine. She is not mistaken about Orsino's true nature and loves him for who he really is, while the other characters in the play seem to be in love with an illusion. Viola's love for Orsino does not alter during the play, nor is it transferred to another person.

Romantic desire is struggle ingrained within William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, strained by the nature of homosexual love. The depths of human sexuality are explored in Twelfth Night through the relationships between Duke Orsino and Viola as Cesario, Olivia and Viola, and Sebastian and Antonio. Twelfth Night represents homoerotic love in both radical and conservative ways, while furthermore questioning the boundaries of gender and disguise depicted by the relationships featured in the play. Shakespeare’s work is profound, since the play acknowledges homosexual love without punishment, and challenges if love is truly determined by gender, while also upholding

He is one who is supposedly love-struck from the elegant and beautiful Olivia, yet she does not feel the same way. Instead, someone else feels the same regarding Duke Orsino: Viola (Cesario). Throughout the play, it is clear Duke Orsino is all about himself, as he places himself at the center of all situations, constantly repeating personal pronouns (Me, my, I) This complicated love triangle egotist Orsino encounters with his lavish lifestyle makes him a perfect form of communication for Shakespeare to share ideas about love and marriage. Some simple themes that Shakespeare communicates are that love is indeed something that occurs first sight, as with Viola, Orsino, and Olivia, but also that it is something one must learn that they cannot control. Viola, Orsino, and Olivia all realize this to a degree, and Orsino ends up changing his love for Olivia to love for Viola (other factors contribute as

Different types of love and marriage play a significant role in Shakespeare’s twelfth night, whether unrequited like with Antonio and Malvolio; or something seemingly unattainable like with Duke Orsino. Love is prevalent as one of Shakespeare's central theme emphasized in the Twelfth Night. With that, we see Shakespeare communicate different interpretations and feelings regarding the subject. He does this with the medium of melodramatic characters. However, this essay will solely elaborate on the character Duke Orsino and his exploration of love. Through Orsino’s actions, Shakespeare conveys several messages still applicable today, some of which are about the fine line between superficial love and genuine love, love's incoherency, and love's

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.

In the play twelfth night, Shakespeare covered three types of love : Lust, true love and brotherly love. Love is one of the most confusing and most misunderstood emotions that we as humans posses. Love is an extremely diverse emotion which is why it was used as the main topic in twelfth night.

One can observe Orsino's love for Olivia as obsessive. Orsino’s first words “If music be the food of love, play on,” introduce him as a love-sick character whose mind revolves around a woman who does not return his feelings (I.i.1). Olivia constantly populates his mind and he does not cease his pursuit for her love, even after she expresses distaste towards him. Shakespeare mocks love-sick individuals for acting like fools and putting themselves through misery. After learning of Olivia’s marriage, Orsino realizes he has lost her and lashes out at Cesario. He threatens him by stating “I’ll sacrifice the lamb I do love to spite a raven’s heart within a dove”(V.i.33-34). Shakespeare uses Orsino’s love for Olivia to differentiate between good and bad love. Unrequited love can cause an individual to pursue violent actions in blind rage. Orsino shows how love is consuming, crippling, and hinders the ability to live out life.Orsino believes his love for Olivia is true, but he is actually in love with the idea of love, and believes he can only obtain it from Olivia. Shakespeare tries to inform the audiences that they could mistakenly believe they are in

However in the fifth act, Orsino is a changed man. He is a person of depth and feeling. While, not completely changed into a man that would be respectable in our society, Duke Orsino has become a reputable person. In this act, Orsino realizes that he will never marry Olivia because she does not want that. “Boy, thou hast said to me a thousand times thou never shouldst love woman like to me.” Orsino says to Olivia (5.1.279-280) Upon the realization that his framework idea of love has been squashed, Orsino looks within his heart to find that Viola, the person who has stuck by him in his lowest days, is the woman who holds his heart. He says to her “‘Your master quits you; and for your service done to him, so much against the mettle of you sex so far beneath you soft and tender breeding, and since you called me “master” for so long, here is my hand. You shall from this time be your master’s mistress. ‘“(5.1.237-242) With this statement, he creates Viola his

Much of the first half of the Twelfth Night is about disguised identities and general misconceptions about who is actually who. The play opens on a note of melancholy and death, Orsino grieving because Olivia refuses to love him and Viola and Olivia mourning the deaths of their brothers. It is following a shipwreck that Viola disguises herself as a male, ensuring that confusion will be part of the plot. The idea of masquerading as a member of the opposite sex is a familiar device and the “complications, artificial as they may appear, are an essential part of the play’s complete development.” (Travers 308) It is interesting to note that unlike other comedies such as “The Tempest”, Shakespeare does not create an older generation who prevent the young lovers from being together; instead it is the perplexity about gender and that keeps them apart. Sebastian, Viola’s identical twin, is the solution to all of the problems, though his appearance does add to it for a short while. Viola, dressed as Cesario, is mistaken for Sebastian by Antonio, and is asked for the money that he gave to Sebastian. However, this type of confusion adds to the comic nature of the plot as the audience is aware of the concealed identities. Order eventually comes from the chaos, disguises are shed and identities are revealed. The appearance of Sebastian ensures that the marriage will be possible for the main characters; Viola is free to marry Orsino and Olivia marries Sebastian, although she

Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain. Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, Orsino depicts love dolefully as an “appetite” that he wants to satisfy and cannot, at another point; he calls his desires “fell and cruel hounds”. Olivia more bluntly describes love as a

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

In Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night or What you Will, the characters are involved in a plot complete with trickery, disguise, and love. Each character is defined not by his or her gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to take because of the complicated situation that arises. Unlike their gender, the speech the characters give an insight to their true personalities. In the Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery and over-dramatic language, long poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his overemotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches.

Shakespeare presents Orsino as furious and irritated at Olivia’s constant refusal of his love and starts noticing how Olivia is not the perfect woman he claims she is while discreetly implying a shift of his romantic feelings for someone else (Cesario/Viola).

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

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.