Self-Love And True Love In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

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Self-Love is True Love

In the Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the play emphasizes how there is not one way to show love, whether this is showing love to others or to oneself. Each character tends to explicitly show love towards another person whereas; Maria shows her love in a different manner. In the first act we are able to see how Orsino shows love to Olivia by sending Cesario as a messager to wooe Olivia for Orsino. And because Olivia interacts with Cesario, Olivia falls in love with Cesario instead of Orisno. She shows her love towards him by giving him the materialism in a way of buying his love. In addition, Cesario falls deeply in love with her master Orsino that she knows that she is not able to have, but only imagine having. While Antonio …show more content…

The act of having the care and love for one’s true self is the first step in loving oneself before admitting in having feelings for someone else. Maria does not question her actions and does not need approval from anyone to do what she has in mind. “I will drop in his way some obscure epistles of love, wherein bythe color of his beard, the shape of his leg, the manner of his gait, the expressure of his eye, forehead, and complexion, he shall find himself most feeling personated.” (2.3.63) “I can write very like my lady your niece. On a forgotten matter, we can hardly make distinction of our hands” (Dolan 114) Maria does not question this to another person neither to herself which shows a form of self-love because she is dependent of herself and not of someone else. Someone who loves themselves feels confident with the decision that ones makes and does not do their actions to be able to please another being but for herself. Maria is a character that shows the true meaning of love by showing the love to herself, in which case she has self-sufficient love and does not depend on others for her …show more content…

He is more concern in figuring out what exactly does he needs to do to be able to win her love or at least be approved by his love. He is self-centered in himself, in only ways that he could possibility win Olivia’s love. This only causes destruction since he should be more concerned about ways where he could be more stabled in his self-love for himself and not for someone if he has not done so.
Maria through the play shows the real love by also showing the love for others and her care for others. Even though Maria is the gentlewoman of Olivia she is able to care for others in a very true way because she has cared for herself first, she has meet her needs before meeting the needs of someone else. In Sanner Garofalo’s Portrayals of Twelfth Night’s Maria, states Maria as, “a concerned women chasing after and taking care of her love interest, Sir Toby. While this is partially true since she does take care of Sir Toby as she also takes care of her lady, Olivia, and is not taking care of Sir Toby in a way to reach out to his love. In contrast, Maria maria has been working for Olivia for a long time, and is getting paid for caring for her unlce and her. For example, she states “by my troth, Sir Toby, you must come in earlier o’nights, your cousin, my lady, takes great exceptions to your ill hours.”

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