The Contrasted Attitudes to Love in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
In the play, Twelfth Night, Shakespeare shows two main attitudes to
love. The courtly, fairy tale love among people of high social class,
for example Duke Orsino's attitude to love, and there is the 'earthy',
realistic and physical love among the middle and lower class, like the
love between Sir Toby and Maria. Shakespeare parallels the idealized
love with earthy love, and between these are expressed the attitudes
to love of Olivia, Viola and Feste.
Duke Orsino's opening speech to the play is all four legs that make
the 'throne' of courtly love. This paragraph explains the whole of
Orsino's personality; very romantic, madly in love, but the ironic
thing is that he does not mention who he loves, not even the sex or
creation of the person he loves. This only proves that Orsino is in
love with love itself.
We can also tell that Orsino's love is unhealthy, but in Orsino's
favour, he is trying to end his love. This is pointed out from the
first line of his speech, 'If music be the food of love, play on' line
1, 1:1.
Actually this line seems very romantic and that he truly loves a
beautiful goddess by describing music as being the 'food' that his
love feeds on but then Orsino crushes this beautiful image with the
next two lines,
('Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.' Lines 2-3, 1:1)
by adding on that he hopes that if he feeds on too much of the music
he will get sick of it and his love will die after 'eating' too much
of the music.
Also from this speech, we can tell the Orsino is of high social class,
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... middle of paper ...
...be Count Malvolio!' as if it
were a dream of his). We then can tell that Malvolio is a pure social
climber and is to me the biggest fool of this play.
In Act 5 scene 1 lines 359-361 we are surprised to hear that Sir Toby
has married Maria as a reward for her help with tricking Malvolio. I
think Sir Toby used that as a cover-up instead of saying that he truly
loved her and that her help just added more fire to his passion for
her. But Maria I think did this to catch Sir Toby's attention to show
that she is clever and mischievous like he is, but I do not think she
did this to socially climb but because she likes Sir Toby and his
personality since his is very similar to hers. I believe her love is
true.
In conclusion, Twelfth Night includes many different attitudes to love
and that it is linked to social climbing.
...alvolio by slipping seamlessly into Sir Toby’s ploy. All of this reveals Feste’s inward character as wise and witty, as opposed to his social repute as an uneducated lower-class fool.
doesn’t care who it is as long as there is love in his life that he
In all of Shakespeare's plays, there is a definitive style present, a style he perfected. From his very first play (The Comedy of Errors) to his very last (The Tempest), he uses unique symbolism and descriptive poetry to express and explain the actions and events he writes about. Twelfth Night, The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream are all tragicomedies that epitomise the best use of the themes and ideology that Shakespeare puts forth.
In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the views of love held by the character Romeo contrast sharply with the views of Mercutio. Romeo's character seems to suffer from a type of manic depression. He is in love with his sadness, quickly enraptured and easily crushed again on a passionate roller coaster of emotion. Mercutio, by contrast is much more practical and level headed. His perceptions are clear and quick, characterized by precise thought and careful evaluation. Romeo, true to his character begins his appearance in the play by wallowing in his depression over Rosaline who does not return his love:
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In Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night the great bard uses humor and mistaken identity not only to poke fun at romantic stories of “perfect love” and the foolish behavior of the aristocrats, but also to reveal man’s anxieties surrounding courtship, gender performance, and love as a whole. The portion of the play I have chosen to analyze are lines 188-256 in Act 5 scene one when Sebastian enters the stage and discovers Viola alive. The siblings give information about themselves to determine each other’s identity before Viola finally reveals herself to be female, allowing the farce to come to an end and the characters to return to their normal roles. Viola then declares her love for Orsino and he accepts her affections. While this scene is certainly
After Olivia has her very first conversation with Cesario (Viola), where he tries to woo her for Duke Orsino, she immediately falls in love with him. After Cesario leaves her palace, Olivia says to herself ‘Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit do give thee fivefold blazon. Not too fast; soft, soft. Unless the master were the man. How now? Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ Here Olivia states that Cesario’s external features are what attract her to him. Her metaphor contains a s...
with her. He also wants to inform his love that he will give her a
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.
In Act 2 scene 5 the mood is very lighthearted and is full of theatrical comedy, we find Sir Toby, Sir Andrew and their friend Fabian hidden away as they await Malvolio to stumble upon the letter supposedly written by Olivia. Even though they are hidden the audience can still see their reactions and hear their comments, which adds to the melodramatic aspect of the scene. The audience is anxious to see what unravels next as they know Maria purposely wrote the letter in order to fool Malvolio.
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.
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Emotions are among the most potent forces humanity has ever faced, and, as William Shakespeare emphasizes, love is one of the most influential emotions an individual can experience. Throughout Twelfth Night, Shakespeare focuses on one main characteristic about love that helps to solidify the strength of this emotion on the characters. He wants to reader to understand that love is one of the few forces that can instantaneously incapacitate and cripple human beings, yet it simultaneously wields the capacity to bestow the highest level of satisfaction within an individual.
The film Shakespeare In Love is a very complex but straightforward plot. Where William Shakespeare was mandated to compose a play right at the moment when his imagination was minimal. Frustrated and looking for inspiration, he met a beautiful lady with the name of Viola de Lessups bumping his creativity giving birth to the so famous play “Romeo and Juliet.” The set of the events along with the actions Shakespeare and Viola take and the reactions they produce form the narrative of the film a long with the mise-se-scene made out of the movie a hit in Hollywood by capturing the attention of the audience with the combination of different artistic choices.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a play with themes that parallel the folly of the festival it is named after. The main storyline of the plot plays on this a lot by mixing up the stereotypes around gender that were very present at the time. However, a sub-plot involving secondary characters defines this theme even more. It takes the idea even further by relating servants’ attempts to blur the lines between social classes. Twelfth Night’s Maria and Malvolio both have great aspirations to rise above their social class. However, Maria succeeds where Malvolio fails because of her capability to make use of the satiric ambiance of her mistress’s household to achieve her goals.