The Theme of Love in William Shakespeares Twelfth Night Essay

The Theme of Love in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare focuses strongly on the theme of love; romantic love, friendship, brotherly and sisterly love, unrealistic love and self-love. In this essay I am going to explore these aspects and write about the different sides of love in the play, such as humour and suffering. We find that in Twelfth Night love is a very complicated thing and confusion often occurs. At the beginning of the play we find Orsino talking dramatically of his love for Olivia but actually seems to be in love with the idea of love itself. This shows that his feelings are not actually true and that he is very self-indulgent. He uses exaggerated language whilst lying in rose beds, listening to music and talking constantly to his servants of Olivia's beauty. He also compares his love to food and in this quote he is saying how he hopes his appetite will simmer when it all gets too much and he can no longer handle it. Orsino says, 'If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it, that surfeiting, the appetite may sicken and so die.' (I.i.1-3). Orsino seems to be rather in love with himself and assumes that Olivia will return his feelings for her. He says 'Her sweet perfections with one selfsame King!' (I.i.39). Here he compares himself to a King, which shows his self-love and arrogance. Viola's love is an example of true love in the play and she also shows no self-love unlike Orsino, Olivia and Malvolio. In scene ii, Viola is shipwrecked on the Illyrian coast and is distraught as her brother Sebastian disappeared during the storm. She shows strong love for her b... ...s he is so close to Sebastian. There is a lot of confusion and swapping of feelings in Twelfth Night. I feel that the only true love is Viola's love for Orsino as this is the only man she loves during the whole play and is the one she ends up marrying. I think Olivia seems to fall in love too easily as she thinks she can have any man. Also, Maria and Sir Toby seem to marry just for the sake of it as they are close and have no one else to really be with. Feste remains self-contained and is not driven by love or ever gets distressed by it. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare explores love with great detail and explains it extremely well. I think that his thoughts on love and the way in which he writes about all the tangles and confusion give a lot of interest to the play making it a great play to read and also act out.