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Twelfth Night Love Essay

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There are multiple types of love in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but which really express true love? True love is requited sentiment and affection despite circumstance. This essay will discuss three types of love expressed in the play: recompense, unrequited, and family. The only one of these that also expresses true love is familial love.
Recompense love is payment for someone’s actions or good character, not feeling of intimacy or romantic affection for someone. Slights describes this type of love as “beneficent fortune and human intrigue” in The Principle of Recompense in ‘Twelfth Night’. The payment for actions relates to “beneficent fortune” and payment for someone’s character relates to “human intrigue” (Slights). An example of recompense …show more content…

Two distinct example of this type of love from the play are the brother/sister relationships between Viola and Sebastian and Olivia and her deceased brother. Familial love cannot be broken or changed in a moment like the feelings and relationships at the end of the play when true identities were revealed (Crowther). These relationships express unconditional, reciprocated love. Because of family, these relationships are not hinged are circumstance, and they are not created from desire or by payment for gratitude or intrigue. These relationships bring the most sadness. Although Orsino is continually denied by Olivia, his hurt is incomparable to Olivia’s grief for her brother’s death or Viola and Sebastian’s grief in thinking each other had died. One other relationship that could be seen as familial is Olivia’s relation to Toby. Although Toby is a drunkard, is rowdy, irresponsible, and careless, Olivia still allows him to stay with her. Her patience is tested, but ultimately her affection for him in unconditional because of their familial relationship (Crowther). Familial love can be the only expression of true love discussed in this essay because it is the only type that fits the bill of requited, unconditional

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