Twelfth Night Research Paper

     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.

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

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

The problem is that she “cannot obtain Orsino's love as long as she is mistaken for Cesario” (193). Viola is condemned by her outside appearance to repress her feelings toward her master. Slights comments that, “as if it were not hard enough on Viola to be in love with [Orsino] the romance plot that Shakespeare adapts demands that [Olivia] falls in love with [Cesario]” (341). Viola/Cesario comments on her own predicament saying, “How will this fage? My master loves [Olivia] dearly/

In the Twelfth Night, the typical craziness of love and relationships is shown. Viola starts the confusion as she poses a man to get a job in the home of the Duke, Orsino. Because of her hard work and loyalty, she or Cesario (which is her disguised name) becomes a favorite of Orsino. The real twist begins here because Viola begins to fall in love with Orsino, but since she is “Cesario”, she cannot let these feelings be known without reveling her true identity.

The play Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, explores and makes fun of love. In the beginning of Twelfth Night, a young girl, Viola, is shipwrecked, saved, and brought to an unfamiliar land. She then decides to cross-dress as a boy in order to get a job in Duke Orsino’s court. She soon falls in love with Duke Orsino, who loves the Countess Olivia, yet she finds herself in the middle of a love triangle as Orsino sends her to woo Olivia. She is put in a pickle as she does not want to disappoint the Duke but neither does she want her efforts to succeed.

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).

Despite knowing that Orsino “loves” Olivia, Viola almost immediately falls in love with Orsino. And because Viola is disguised as a man, she cannot show her true feelings for Orsino. After Orsino asks Viola to speak with Olivia and professes his love to her, Viola lets the reader know what she is truly feeling by saying “Yet a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife” (Act 1, Scene 4, Line 40). This shows that even though she is willing to help Orsino pursue Olivia, Viola ultimately wants to marry Orsino. Viola’s love for Orsino is revealed again at the end of Act 2, Scene 4. Orsino is asking Viola to try harder in the quest for Olivia and he basically says that there is no love more noble or great as his, so she must love him. Viola then proceeds to say that maybe Olivia doesn’t love him; however, there is “someone” out there that does. She says:

One of the most important themes in Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, is the theme of madness. It is one of the driving forces to this play. Madness plays a key role due to the effect it has on the many people themselves. Just like in our world, we notice the madness. We know the madness is there. We know that others are aware of its presence as well. The only thing we don’t do, is find the purpose for it. As humans, we don’t try to find reason or sanity with the madness in this world. In fact, we go along with it. That’s why the roles of madness is so important.

Shakespear portrays the women as fragile, with the way they act, and the way others act towards them, Viola is seen as a very emotional woman, who is in mourning for the death of her brother in (1.2.4) "My brother he is in Elysium", but at the same time falls in love with duke Orsino as shown in (5.1.130-131) when she says: "After him I love/More than I love these eyes, more than my life,". While Viola is in love with Orsino, Olivia falls in love with Viola who, while masquerading as a man is charged with delivering massages of love to Olivia. Olivia's love becomes obvious when in (2.2.21) Olivia, desperate to spend more time with Cesario/Viola sends Malvolio to return a ring to Cesario/Viola which had never been his/hers to begin with. Viola quickly

Twelfth Night or What You Will is one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. It has been performed hundreds of times and adapted into a number of modern films. The main plot of the play follows Viola, a girl who is rescued from a shipwreck and enters into the service of the Duke Orsino disguised as a man. Rising quickly in his estimation, Viola begins delivering messages of love on his behalf to Olivia, a noble woman who has no interest in Orsino’s advances. Over the course of the play Olivia falls in love with the disguised Viola, Viola falls in love with Orsino, and Viola’s twin brother Sebastian, who supposedly died in the shipwreck, returns. Following Sebastian’s return the twins are mistaken for each other, leading to both

A key interaction occurs between Orsino and Viola regarding the capacity of a woman's love. Orsino speaks to Viola (who is currently disguised as Cesario):

     Shakespeare's Twelfth Night examines patterns of love and courtship through a twisting of gender roles. In Act 3, scene 1, Olivia displays the confusion created for both characters and audience as she takes on the traditionally male role of wooer in an attempt to win the disguised Viola, or Cesario. Olivia praises Cesario's beauty and then addresses him with the belief that his "scorn" (3.1.134) only reveals his hidden love. However, Olivia's mistaken interpretation of Cesario's manner is only the surface problem presented by her speech. The reality of Cesario's gender, the active role Olivia takes in pursuing him/her, and the duality of word meanings in this passage threaten to turn the

Twelfth Night, Or What You Will, written by Shakespeare during the Elizabethan era, centers around the convoluted and shifting nature of love. The play makes a point that the ways in which love and affection are expressed and interpreted differ amongst the different social classes. Count Orsino and Lady Olivia, representing the upper class of the nobility, demonstrate their love in grand, impersonal gestures, whereas Viola, whose status is slightly lower, does so in a selfless, more authentic manner. This stark difference in how these two classes perceive love is also seen in how quickly the feelings of Orsino and Olivia change for their love interests once someone new comes along. The nobility has little to no sense of what genuine love is, which is seen in both their frivolous displays of affection and how quickly they are able to fall for someone new.

In the famous comedy Twelfth Night, Shakespeare dabbles with the phenomenon of love. This is seen through his various characters who are forced to deal with the aspects brought on by love. Characters like Cesario, who is Viola dressed as a boy. In the play the characters deal with their problems around love. The three major characters that love seems to impact more than the rest are Duke Orsino, Lady Olivia, and her servant Malvolio. Each of these characters is affected by love and each reacts differently when in love to out of love. Their reactions to love are based on their behavior, their speech, and their relations with other characters.