Love In William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

In many of Shakespeare 's plays he often has plots about love. Whether tragic or comical, they tug the audience’s emotions throughout the story, keeping them wondering as to what will happen next. Perhaps one of the most prominent love stories is Shakespeare 's romantic comedy, Twelfth Night. With many scenarios filled with hilarity, this play uses different aspects of love to conjure laughs from the spectators or readers. Each character has a different form of love they feel, including the love of being in love, the love of one’s self, and being blinded by love. Thus, we can wonder if Shakespeare intended for this play to be entirely ironic, in the fact that almost everyone’s love is superficial, false, or arrogant. Although Twelfth Night …show more content…
Orsino even listens to romantic music as the quote implies and enjoys the bittersweet emotions it casts about him. Thus he is not truely in love with Olivia, he is in love with love itself. At the end of the play, Orsino once again reitterates that his love is not actually true. Upon the realization that the main character, Viola, is actually a woman, he says, “Give me thy hand, and let me see thee in thy woman’s weeds.” (5.1.290-291). As soons as he realizes Cesario is actually a female, he completely forgets about his infatuation with Olivia and throws himself at Viola’s feet. He spent the entire play complaining about his unreciprocated love with the duchess, and suddenly the tide changes and he and Viola are engaged. Clearly it does not matter who he loves as long as it exists. The inconsistency of his love from one person to the next and his lack of true love is quite comical and most likely one of the reasons Shakespeare incorporated Orsino loving love itself in Twelfth Night. Similar to Orsino, Malvolio is also in love. However, rather than being addicted to it, he is in love with