Suffering In Twelfth Night

Love being a cause of suffering is a persistent theme throughout the play Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. Characters are constantly falling in love with one another, which causes love triangles to appear and create conflict from start to finish. Although the play offers a happy ending, there is much suffering before the characters may be content with their situations. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night has a complex love triangle between a few of the main characters causing several conflicts to appear within the play. Olivia falls in love with the male form of Viola, Cesario. However, Olivia is being courted by Orsino, who overtime becomes fond of his new page, Cesario. On top of a love triangle, Sebastian, Viola’s lost twin brother, also …show more content…
Viola pretends to be a man named Cesario after washing ashore on Illyria. After becoming page to Orsino, Viola is quick to fall in love with her master, Orsino. However, no matter how fond they become of each other, she cannot show her true love for Orsino because she appears to him as Cesario, a male and his page. This leaves her in a state of despair and suffering which is shown in her soliloquy stating “my state is desperate for my master’s love” (II, II, DCXCIV). The last character of the triangle, Olivia, is also a victim of love. She falls in love with Cesario at first site. Olivia has much trouble understanding why Cesario will not love her back. It causes much anguish and suffering that the one she loves will never love her and she cannot understand the reasoning for which Cesario can never love her. Unfortunately, Cesario was Viola and incapable of loving Olivia because she was not a male and in love with Orsino. Throughout Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare, love being the cause of suffering is a persistent theme. The complex love triangle between Orsino, Viola (or Cesario), and Olivia, leaves much distress between the three because they couldn’t be with the one they