Love theme in twelfth night
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Ans. It is a well established fact that a Shakespearean comedy has an abundance of love. It is a love at first sight. It comes to people from all strata of society-to the rich and the poor, to the educated and the uneducated, to the Civilised and the peasants, and to men and women. love theme in twelfth night
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There is hardly any character who is not in love. There may be a Jaques in As You Like It’ or a Malvolio in Twelfth Night’, who are not in love with any worman; but that is because they are in love with themselves, so with them too love exists, though in a thoroughly unacceptable form. Love in Shakespearean comedies invariably leads to marriage at the end of the play. Enroute there are misunderstandings, mistaken identities, the usual lovers’ tiff and much heartbreak.
Treatment of love in twelfth night
There is even temporary straying and disloyalty. But all this is sorted out at the end and happiness pervades through everyone and everything. Twelfth Night’ is no exception. Viola falls in love with Duke Örsino at first sight, who in turn is in love with Olivia, who herself falls in love with the disguised Viola at first sight, and marries Viola’s look- alike Sebastian without as much as a semblance of thought. In his comedies Shakespeare touches all kinds of love. love theme in twelfth night
Twelfth Night’ is a study of love on various planes. In no other comedy has Shakespeare conveyed such an abundant variety of love as in this play. There is the overly sentimental love of Orsino, the ideal and romantic love of Viola, the narcissis- tic self-love of Malvolio, the ludicrous and stupid love of Sir Andrew, the folly- fallen love of Sir Toby and Olivia’s love with an illusion. It is undoubtedly Viola who lies in most of our minds, as an exquisitely sensitive person. love theme in twelfth night
Theme of love in twelfth night pdf
Her speech ‘she never told her love’, is the one which makes us feel so. In order to conform to this conception Shakespeare does not give it any exuberant gaiety in the moment when Viola must have been amused by the thought that she is being loved as a man by Olivia.
She is one of those completely healthy and profoundly happy young women who, de- spite being fraught with the capacity of loving is certain to be true in love, is the sort of person who would rarely if ever complain about her own troubles in love. She is definitely not the kind of person who would consider it to be fatal to her existence like any ordinary woman. For the duke, is the feminine wilfulness of Olivia’s abrupt passion for the disguised page elevates itself to such poetic and sentimental heights that her.
continuous advances do not make us think of her as forward or unfeminine. She has all the privileges of being a princess of romance and in fact lives like one. She is high born and high bred, with luxury and servants surrounding her. She has never been opposed in her life. The first time any opposition comes her way through the disguised page, rouses in her every nuance offeminity. She could easily have been capricious; instead what we find is a person of intense passion. love theme in twelfth night
It is surprising that Olivia is loved by every man who is around her. Orsino, the Duke, pines away for her incessantly, and till he is informed that Olivia has married Sebastian and that his page is in fact a beautiful woman, he woos the Countess with relentless monotony. Sir Andrew loves her too, but then he is such a fool that his love can never attain even a semblance of profundity.
Theme of love in twelfth night
Malvolio, the man who is in love with himself, fancies himself to be Count Malvolio when his fantasies are rather heartlessly aroused into believing a fallacy that Olivia loves him. Olivia marries Sebastian thinking himto be Cesario. Though there is something extremely supererogatory in the way Olivia marries him, Shake- speare does let love to ultimately prevail in the manner which ought to be very satisfying to our sensibilities. love theme in twelfth night
Olivia is in love with the innocence, youth and boyish charm of Cesario, which in fact, is a mere illusion, since behind the facade and the disguise is an extremely fragile and beautiful woman. When Olivia marries Sebastian she actually marries all the good qualities that she had always seen in Viola, since Sebastian is a twin brother not only in looks but also has Viola’s other good qualities. Orsino’s love has a sickness about it. This is mainly because he is in love with love itself.
He is rather contended to send his page with messages of love and sit idle at home so that he can feed his love with music, and pine away the hours. This shows that his”love lacks depth. Shakespeare believed that the path of love is strewn with impediments and difficulties. He was true to life in depicting that the course of true love is never smooth. There is also an eternal triangle of love. This triangle is evident in the love between Orsino, Olivia and Viola.
Since one love is hidden behind a disguise, the other love cannot see behind the disguise, and the third is an exercise of loving the concept of love only, the whole world of love becomes confusing. The triangle also causes many impediments. Shakespeare’s comedies love invariably ended in marriage. This hap- pens in Twelfth Night’ also where despite the confusions and impediments, love prevails in the end.
Shakespeare’s comedies also have a surfeit of mar- riages and Twelfth Night’ is no exception. Olivia marries Sebastian, Orsino marries Viola, and Sir Toby marries Maria. Those who remain unmarried could not justifibly have a mate if the social moral order was to prevaiL Feste is a Fool and his purpose is a distinct one, that of preserving the sanity of the play’s circumstances through wit and satire. Sir Andrew is foolish and meek, and such men can never have true love.
Comment upon the element of love in Twelfth Night
Malvolio only loves himself, and thus is left alone by Shakespeare. In conclusion, we can safely say that there is something very exacting about handling the theme of love in the play Twelfth Night’. love theme in twelfth night.
