12th Night Love Essay

Twelfth Night Essay.

Title: Explore the different types of loves represented in Twelfth Night.

If you ever wanted to investigate the different kinds of love there may be in existence, and try to define and understand how different love can be represented, then twelfth seems to be the ultimate play. It was written in 1623 by William Shakespeare, the characters of twelfth night display various sorts of characteristics and personalities which are the essential ingredients that add to the play to show the different ways love can be represented. This is shown through the way they inter - act with the other characters. They each portray different levels of social importance and value in what would have been Shakespeare's time.

The different varieties of love which I intend to discuss during this essay will include: Unrequited love, courtship, false love, family love, friendship, wasted love, and above all true love. These relationships can be described in great depth, through the character expression, their personality, language, structure and the role they play in Twelfth Night.

In this Essay, I intend to understand, explain and distinguish the different sorts of love from the other, and hope to discover whether love overall is indeed what makes the world go round. I'd like to come to some sort of conclusion by using examples of the characters and explain each different situation between them that is love related.

Our first opportunity to investigate what sort of love is to begin in the play meets us in Act 1, scene 1. Orsino, a dreary, romantic and boring bachelor, who seeks Olivia, speaks these opening lines to the play; "If music be the food of love play on..." His words are written in poetry and are in rich meaning. The first line is important to the theme of the play. It is a blank verse structure. It gives the audience a good grasp and a fixture to Orsino's character and his need for love. It also gives us a good beginning to the play, as it introduces its main theme - love. The themes of love, however are rushed, unbuilt and within this first speech, Orsino also goes onto say, "O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou". This is Shakespeare's way of maybe hinting that the love he would wanted to have shown and betrayed to his audiences, was of a very fast paced and non realistic pace rather than how actual people fall into true love.

The relationship between Orsino and Olivia is quite distant, and the audience doesn't actually see both of them together until the final act of the play to be apparent. Olivia is a lost, and deeply upset, grieving woman, who won't let go of the fact she had lost her brother 7 years ago. She has locked herself away and desocialized herself from society for so long, that she no longer feels the need to give love to a stranger anymore, but to carry on loving her brother. This is a love in itself, as it demonstrates how much Olivia cared for him and how much love she could give just to 1 person alone. Maybe this is why Orsino courts her, so he can get loved and drain Olivia at the same time. But does this mean that he means to court her for real purposes? Or is he just selfishly seeking someone for his own benefit? In a sense, he is longing for Olivia, but as Olivia is so tied up in her own issues, she cannot love him back. Therefore this type of love is unrequited between Orsino and Olivia. It is not solid or based on memory; time spent with one another, but purely through the fact they have a long distant knowledge of each other's existence. Which doesn't mean anything. However, Orsino Pursues his love for Olivia and is very much so determined to go after her, despite the unrequited love he will receive.

During the play, the unrequited love' has quite a frequent occurrence between some of the characters. We see from Orsino's later admirer, just how this particular character manages to deal with it. Her name is Viola. She becomes shipwrecked on the island of Illyria. Viola - like Olivia is grieving for her brother's lost existence, as her twin Sebastian, never washed up onto the sure, so viola thinks that he never survived. However little does she know, that he does and washes up a little later on in Act2 scene 1 with his fellow traveler Antonio. But it is in Act 1 scene 2, in which Viola hears from her captain and fears Sebastian dead. It is also in this chapter in which she hears of Orsino's presence on the island. Automatically, she falls for him. Viola already knew of his name and roughly what his life had been like, as she had heard so much about him. This enabled Viola to rekindle or re - spark a stronger likeness to him. Viola now courts him; however, when she learns that of Olivia and Orsino's need for her, she decides to go and help him seek Olivia, despite her own emotions and feelings held for him. This shows how much she is in love with him. Though at first Viola's love seems to be undeveloped and rushed. But it does go to show, that if you really loved someone, you'd let them go, and help them find a place which is more suited to them, even if isn't yourself. We see from Orsino and Viola's relationship, that it is a good friendship.

However, the only reason why Viola can be close to Orsino, is because she is helping him seek Olivia in disguise. She has to pretend that she works for Orsino and is of higher class. Her disguise is that in the image of her supposed dead brother Sebastian. This enables Orsino to except Viola's disguise and use her as a tool to help him court Olivia. Although Orsino has no idea that Viola is indeed a woman, her disguise is portrayed in an elegant, collective and respectful manner. It is this very thing in the play, which creates dramatic irony for the audience. The tension and the scenes building up to the truth until Viola reveals her true self, makes us nervous but full of hope for Viola. Not only Olivia's love for Orsino is non-existent. Viola's male name is Cesario, and as Cesario she manages to attract Olivia mistakenly towards her male character, rather than trying to get her to meet Orsino, this is not Viola's fault. It is Olivia's desire to love Cesario. This type of love is courtly love based. This is where some of the love starts to get complicated through the misunderstanding of Viola's Disguise. This comes as quite a shock to viola, as she hadn't planned for a female to fall for her, let alone expected it.

Olivia's Love for Cesario is defeating the purpose of the role Viola cut out for her self to play. Not only does she have to deal with her love for Orsino and keep her feelings under control; she

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