love in the twelfth night essay

Twelfth Night

William shakespeare, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Every major character in Twelfth Night experiences some form of desire or love. Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia . Viola falls in love with Orsino, while disguised as his pageboy, Cesario . Olivia falls in love with Cesario. This love triangle is only resolved when Olivia falls in love with Viola's twin brother, Sebastian , and, at the last minute, Orsino decides that he actually loves Viola. Twelfth Night derives much of its comic force by satirizing these lovers. For instance, Shakespeare pokes fun at Orsino's flowery love poetry, making it clear that Orsino is more in love with being in love than with his supposed beloveds. At the same time, by showing the details of the intricate rules that govern how nobles engage in courtship, Shakespeare examines how characters play the "game" of love.

Twelfth Night further mocks the main characters' romantic ideas about love through the escapades of the servants. Malvolio's idiotic behavior, which he believes will win Olivia's heart, serves to underline Orsino's own only-slightly-less silly romantic ideas. Meanwhile, Sir Andrew Aguecheek , Sir Toby Belch , and Maria , are always cracking crass double entendres that make it clear that while the nobles may spout flowery poetry about romantic love, that love is at least partly motivated by desire and sex. Shakespeare further makes fun of romantic love by showing how the devotion that connects siblings (Viola and Sebastian) and servants to masters ( Antonio to Sebastian and Maria to Olivia) actually prove more constant than any of the romantic bonds in the play.

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Desire and Love Quotes in Twelfth Night

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Twelfth Night Essays

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Twelfth Night

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Love Triangles in Twelfth Night

William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is a play filled with phony relationships and misunderstandings due to the use of disguise. The characters are often blind to their true feelings and are deceived by themselves and others. The play explores the themes of true love, self-love, and friendship, which create a love triangle involving different characters in different scenarios. Some instances in the play show true love, such as Viola’s love for Orsino and the strong bond between Viola and Sebastian. Friendship is also a major part of the love triangle, particularly between Orsino and Cesario and between Viola and the Sea Captain. The play also highlights how self-love affects people’s lives, with Malvolio being the easiest to identify with this problem. Overall, Twelfth Night is a perfect example of a love triangle.

            In William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, many relationships are phony and sabotaged for and by protagonists; as a result these relationships are made comical.  The use of disguise causes deception and misunderstanding which leads to love where it is not meant to be.  Many of the characters who are tangled up in the web of love are too blind to see that their emotions and thoughts toward the other characters are untrue.  They are being deceived by themselves and the others around them.  True love, self love, and friendship creates a love triangle, which involves different characters in different scenarios.

            There are certain instances in the play where the emotion of love is true, and the two people caught up in it feel very strongly toward each other.  One example is Viola’s love for Orsino.  Although she is pretending to be a man who is virtually unknown in Illyria, she wants to win the Duke’s heart.  While Viola is trying to win Oliva’s love for the Duke, Olivia unknowingly, falls in love with another woman, which is Viola.  Viola was caught up in another true love situation, only this time she was on the receiving end, and things didn’t go so smoothly.  During her attempts to court Olivia for Orsino, Olivia grew to love Orsino.  Viola was now faced with another hardship and there was only one way out, but that would jeopardize her chances with Orsino.  Another case of true love is on a less personal and passionate level.  Viola and Sebastian’s love for one another is a strong bond between them.  Through their times of mourning for each of their obvious deaths they still loved each other.  They believed deep down in their heart that maybe someway that each of them was still alive and well.

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            Friendship is a major part of the love triangle.  The biggest and closest friendship would be between Orsino and Cesario.  They barely knew each other at first, and before long Orsino was telling Cesario his inner love for Olivia.  Cesario was even running his love messages to Olivia.  The other friendship is between Viola and the Sea Captain who had a very deep bond between one another.  They survived the shipwreck together and the Sea Captain promised not to tell anyone about Viola pretending to be a man.

            The play implements how self-love affects people’s lives.  Malvolio is the easiest to identify with that problem.  He thinks of himself as an attractive and dignified man.  Malvolio is conceded and believes that all women adore him.  He likes to see things one way only, and he deceives himself just to suit his outlook on situations.  An example is when he changes Olivia’s words around to make it sound like she likes his yellow cross-gartered socks even though she really can’t stand them.  Sir Toby and Olivia are also full of themselves.  Sir Toby only cares about himself and no body else.  He ignores Maria as she tries to warn him about drinking at night; he also continues to push Sir Andrew to court Olivia.  Even though he doesn’t think, that Sir Andrew has a chance.  Oliva cares about the people around her, but she also thinks that no man is admirable of the beauty.  She thinks she is better than everyone else is.  Twelfth Night is a perfect example of a love triangle.

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Twelfth Night

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Music is present throughout Twelfth Night —the first line, after all, declares that “If music be the food of love, play on.” Examine how music is used throughout the play: What purpose does it serve? What does it add to the plot?

Twelfth Night centers on a blurred depiction of gender, as Viola disguises herself as a man. As head of her household, Olivia also takes on a traditionally male role. Look at how Shakespeare talks about and treats gender throughout the play. What ultimate message about gender and gender roles does he make?

Examine the character of Feste the Fool. What purpose do he and his witty exchanges serve in the play? What does his presence add to the plot?

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To help you look at any scene in Twelfth Night and interrogate it, it’s important to ask questions about how it's written and why.

Shakespeare’s plays are driven by their characters and every choice that’s made about words, structure and rhythm tells you something about the person, their relationships or their mood in that moment. You should always try and ask yourself, like actors do, why is the character saying what they are saying or doing what they are doing? What is their motive?

Just like Detectives, we need to look for clues to help us answer those questions each time and below you can find some interrogation techniques we use to analyse text, introduced by the actors that use them. 

Analysing the Language of Love

Twelfth Night is a play about love and nearly all the characters have romantic feelings for someone. The ways in which they each express these feelings, through the imagery they use and the structure of their language, reveals a lot about them.

There are no two characters who talk about love in exactly the same way but there are some conventions that Shakespeare explores. For example, Orsino speaks about love using the traditional language of courtly love, using verse or poetry. On the other hand, Malvolio speaks almost entirely in prose, even when talking about his love for Olivia. Actors and directors will work together during a rehearsal process to decide what these structural differences might mean about the character’s feelings.

In these videos, exploring rhyming couplets and shared lines, Nia explains what these terms mean. Both of them can be found in Twelfth Night, particularly when characters are talking about love.

What can we learn about the language of love from Act 5 Scene 1?

Look at the extract from Act 5 Scene 1, when the characters are in a high state of stress and confusion about their feelings for each other. See if you can notice the things Nia talks about in the videos about rhyming couplets and shared lines.

Questions to consider

• Why do you think Orsino uses images of tyranny and sacrifice when he is talking about love? What is his view on love? He also uses antithesis and a rhyming couplet to complete his longer speech. What do you think the effect of this might be on those listening to him?
• Why do you think Viola responds to Olivia’s question ‘Where goes Cesario?’ in rhyming couplets? What might be the effect of this?
• How many examples of shared lines can you find in the extract? What do these suggest about the relationships between the characters? What do the rhyming couplets across these shared lines reveal about how the characters feel?
• What do you think is the effect of Olivia ending this exchange in blank verse rather than rhyming couplets?

Using Nia’s strategies we’ve started to look at what the language the characters use in this moment in Act 5 Scene 1 might tell us about them and how they feel. See if you can complete the below grid and create four points which explain what this dialogue reveals about the characters at this point in the play.

Explanation

Evidence Select an option

Explanation Click text to edit

Evidence Click text to edit

Point Click text to edit

What else can I do to explore the language of love?

• Soliloquies are often used by characters to reveal the truth about how they feel to the audience. Look at Olivia’s soliloquy at the end of Act 1 Scene 5 and Viola’s soliloquy at the end of Act 2 Scene 2 and compare with Malvolio’s soliloquy towards the end of Act 2 Scene 5.
• Love is the central theme of Twelfth Night and many different aspects of love are explored throughout the play. Look at the key scenes section to explore different aspects of love in some of those moments in the play, and how it is spoken about.
• Feste sings two love songs during the play: one in Act 2 Scene 3 for Sir Toby and Sir Andrew, and the other in Act 2 Scene 4 for Orsino. How does each song speak about love?

Analysing Viola's Language

Viola’s disguise as a young man allows her to move between the two households of Orsino and Olivia and to interact with every other character in the play. Her style of language changes according to the situation she is in and who she is speaking to. She can be both witty and passionate in her speeches and moves easily between prose and verse.

From her first scene with the Captain in Act 1 Scene 2 until the last scene of the play, no character who meets Viola knows who she really is, but the audience know about her disguise from the start. This gives Viola a special relationship with the audience.

In this video, Paapa Essiedu shares some of the things he looks for to help him understand how a character is feeling when he first looks at a soliloquy. The example he is using is from Hamlet, but you can look for the same clues in Viola’s soliloquies.

What can we learn by looking at the same things in Viola’s soliloquies?

When a character is talking to the audience in a soliloquy they are usually open and honest in what they say. Take a look at the extract from Act 2 Scene 2, and see if you can notice the things Paapa tells us to look out for in Viola’s speech:

• Punctuation
• Line endings

What can we learn about Viola from this soliloquy? Ask yourself:

• What do the full stops and commas reveal about Viola’s thought process? She makes several statements about Olivia throughout the speech, using different punctuation. Can you track what these are? At what point in the speech does she realise what is happening and how does the punctuation help you to realise this?
• There are several rhetorical questions in this speech, what purpose do they serve? What do they show about Viola’s state of mind?
• Viola uses rhyming couplets in two instances. What is the effect of these in the speech? Why does she use them at these particular moments?

Using Paapa’s strategies, looking at punctuation, line endings, and sounds, we’ve started to look at what Viola's language tells us about her in this Act 2 Scene 2 soliloquy. See if you can complete the grid and finish four points which explain what this speech reveals about the character at this point in the play.

What else can I do to explore Viola’s language?

• Take a close look at Act 2 Scene 4 and Act 3 Scene 1 in the key scenes section, where Viola talks in verse about love to both Orsino and Olivia. Try and compare the way in which she talks to both characters and the images and language she uses to describe love.
• Look at Viola’s two main scenes with Olivia, Act 1 Scene 5 and Act 3 Scene 1 and notice when their dialogue changes from prose to verse. Consider what this shift of style might suggest about the characters at these moments.
• Look at Viola’s witty exchange with Feste at the beginning of Act 3 Scene 1. What does this exchange suggest about her skills with language? To what extent do you think she might be describing herself as well as Feste in her soliloquy when Feste leaves?
• Keep a record of when Viola uses verse and when she uses prose and consider why this might be in each case and what this might suggest about her.

Analysing the Imagery

As with all of Shakespeare’s plays, there are lots of types of imagery used in Twelfth Night. It’s a great idea to keep a list of the key quotes and imagery used in each act.

Here are three types of imagery that come up a lot in Twelfth Night:

Hunting Imagery

• Hunting with hounds or hawks was a popular activity in Shakespeare’s time and often how people got their meat. Images of hunting would have been more readily understood by audiences in Shakespeare’s time than our own. When Curio suggests a hunting trip to Orsino in Act 1 Scene 1, Orsino describes himself as a ‘hart’ or deer, pursued by his desires for Olivia ‘like fell and cruel hounds’. In Act 3 Scene 1, Viola compares Feste’s skill as a professional fool to a ‘haggard’ or untrained hawk.
• Orsino in particular uses hunting imagery to talk about love and courtship and his pursuit of Olivia, suggesting that chasing someone to gain their affection is just as much of a sport or game.
• How many examples of hunting imagery can you find in the play and what do they reveal about the character who uses them?

Fools Imagery

• The words 'fool', 'fools or foolish appear 80 times in Twelfth Night. ‘Fool’ is often used to address Feste as a professional fool, but there is also a lot of ambiguity in the text around the idea that a professional fool is not foolish but instead has to be clever and witty. The imagery of fools in Twelfth Night is used to explore which characters are foolish and which have their wits about them. For example, Maria describes Sir Andrew as a ‘foolish knight’ (1:3), and Olivia tells Malvolio ‘Alas poor fool, how have they baffled thee’ (5:1)
• Take a closer look at Act 1 Scene 5 to explore how imagery of fools is used when Feste first appears.

Infection Imagery

• In many cultures, being in love is sometimes compared to an illness. When Olivia realises she has fallen in love with Cesario, she asks ‘Even so quickly may one catch the plague?’ (1:5). Viola also describes how her father’s daughter suffered ‘a green and yellow melancholy’ (2:4) when talking to Orsino. Sometimes, however, the object of love is seen as curing infection. For example, Orsino says when he first saw Olivia ‘Methought she purged the air of pestilence’ (1:1).
• How many examples of infection imagery can you find in the play, particularly in reference to love and feelings? Why do you think the characters use this imagery?

Thinking about Act 1 Scene 5 we’ve started to look at what the imagery and word choices about fools in the scene tells us about Feste, Olivia and Malvolio. Malvolio speaks out against Feste but Olivia defends him saying ‘There is no slander in an allowed fool.’ See if you can complete the below grid and create three points which explain what this language shows about their relationships at this point in the play.

Analysing the Themes

As with all of Shakespeare’s plays, there are lots of themes that appear in Twelfth Night. It’s a great idea to keep a list of key quotes and themes in each act. Here are three themes that can be seen in Twelfth Night and are useful to look out for:

Theme of Deception and Disguise

• Although Viola is the only character in the play who is literally in disguise, many characters are disguising the truth by deceiving others and often themselves.
• Maria deceives Malvolio by writing the letter as though it comes from Olivia, as seen in Act 2 Scene 5. Sir Toby, Fabian and Sir Andrew are all part of this deception, watching it unfold for their own enjoyment. However, Malvolio is also deceiving himself when he believes that Olivia is interested in him as anything more than her steward. He is very quick to credit the letter, which is why the deception works so well. Viola deceives Olivia into believing she is a young man called ‘Cesario’, but Olivia is also deceiving herself in believing that Cesario loves her, but is too proud to admit it.
• Consider who is deceiving whom in Twelfth Night and what reasons they may have for their deceptions.

Theme of Fate

• The characters in Twelfth Night often refer to a power beyond themselves controlling their lives. When Olivia realises she has fallen in love with Cesario, she feels this is her fate saying ‘Fate, show thy force, ourselves we do not owe. / What is decreed must be and be this so’ (1:5). When Viola realises that Olivia has fallen in love with Cesario she talks, not of fate but of how time ‘must untangle this, not I, / It is too hard a knot for me t’untie’ (2:3).
• The blasphemy laws in Shakespeare’s time meant the Christian God was not allowed to be mentioned on stage, so instead of thanking God, Malvolio thanks Jove, alongside his horoscope, for what he sees as his good luck saying ‘Jove and my stars be praised’ (2:5).
• Of course, all the characters are being controlled by a power beyond themselves because they are written by an author, but a good writer suggests that his character could make other choices. Follow one character, look at when they mention fate, fortune and other outside influences and consider what other choices they could have made for themselves at those moments.

Theme of Social Status

• Social position and status are very important in the world of Twelfth Night. Sir Toby is insulted that Malvolio, a servant, tells him off for his behaviour in Act 2, asking ‘Art any more than a steward?’ Malvolio himself dreams of achieving a higher social status through marrying Olivia at which time he could tell others ‘I know my place, as I would they should do theirs.’ (2:5)
• Social status is connected to wealth as well as titles. Viola tells Olivia, while dressed as the servant boy ‘Cesario’, very clearly ‘I am no fee’d post, lady. Keep your purse’ (1:5) whereas Feste gladly accepts ‘sixpence’ from Sir Toby and Sir Andrew to sing in Act 2 Scene 3. This difference in attitude may well be because Viola has come from a different social class, where Feste is used to taking money for his services. How else might this sudden change in her status affect Viola’s behaviour while dressed as ‘Cesario’?
• Can you map the social status of the characters, putting them in order of social importance? Do any of their positions alter as the play progresses?

Teacher Notes

The following activities will help you to explore the art of rhetoric and persuasive speaking with students.

Rhetoric Activities (2012)

The activities can be found on pages 11-16 and look at different aspects of rhetoric using Antony’s speech in Act 3 Scene 1.

You can also print the PEE grids from each of the sections on this page to help students explore the language of central characters and some of the imagery used in more detail.

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