The much awaited longer response question ...
Does Shakespeare present an over idealized version of love? As Orsino says, "For as I am, all true lovers are:/ Unstaid and skittish in all motions else / Save in the constant image of the creature that is belov'd." (2.4) Is Orsino correct? Is Shakespeare correct? What are your thoughts on the portrayal of love in this play thus far. Hint: translate these lines for yourself before responding.
Share, comment, inform in 3 lovely paragraphs ... more if you like. Less if you dare.
21 comments:
I feel that these lines are indeed an over-idealized version of love, however this is not because I see them as false. The love that Orsino describes here defines a true lover as someone who can concentrate on nothing besides the face of the beloved.To me, this sounds like the beginning of a crush, the 'honeymoon phase'. This is the phase in the characters' relationships in which they are enamored, and often oblivious to the realities of relationships and love (reality being that it involves more than saying 'I love you' with music playing in the background). These lines portray an idealized idea of love because they portray love as being in the honeymoon stage, with no other stage in sight.
We have seen that Orsino is in many ways in love with being in love. This gives him the tendency to be overdramatic and pick out the pieces of life that he prefers. For example, he refuses to accept Olivia's rebuking and chooses to see only hope for a relationship to come. This is what he does in this line as well. He picks out his favorite part of love- the dramatic part where the lover is "unstaid and skittish"- and chooses to focus on that. This is why, to him, it would seem that if one is truly in love he would feel only this one particular way. So, he is correct in identifying what I see as just one part of many that make up love. He is incorrect, however, in his assertion that all true lovers feel this way all the time.
It is interesting to watch how love is portrayed in this play. It is such an abstract concept: one's emotions creating such a bond between people. The emphasis that is put on emotions in this case is clearly enormous, yet in the end, in what I admit is a slightly pessimistic sense but I'm just trying to play the devil's advocate, they are really just emotions. They have no physical grounding besides the power that our society allocates to them. With this in mind, I wonder if Shakespeare is taunting the weight we give to these emotions or if he was himself a hopeless romantic. If he is poking fun at love, I think it is a pretty powerful statement because he so accurately describes the feelings of a new crush. Everyone can identify with the increased heartbeat when you talk to that person, or the preoccupation with wondering if they like you too... and Shakespeare's lines here show that because these sentiments have become so clichéd they are now predictable. Is he saying that we are all like Orsino in that we are in love with being in love due to our societal habit of falling into the same patterns of emotions over and over?
The text of Twelfth Night is filled with references, both subtle and obvious, to the greater theme of love. From the very first line, to an excellently crafted prank letter, love permeates throughout the entire script. While it can be argued that Shakespeare presents an exaggerated, idealistic kind of love, I believe that through his characters, Shakespeare intends to convey not a distorted, naïve love, but rather just the many stages and forms that love takes.
Duke Orsino, arguably the protagonist of the entire plot, begins the play with a deservedly famous line, “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it, the surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die.” With his first words, Orsino showcases the version of love Shakespeare has chosen him to represent, the love of being in love. Orsino is in love with music, himself, Olivia, power and eventually Viola. By Line 15 of Scene One, he has moved on from music, and by line 20, he is already enraptured by Olivia. Through Orsino, Shakespeare presents the idea that love comes in many forms and one person can exhibit many of them, “even in a minute.”
Olivia, on the other hand, while repeatedly rejecting the advances of Orsino, instead represents two kinds of love: the love of family, and love at first sight. Having lost both a father and a brother, Olivia grieves and mourns for an incredible amount of time. Along with the Sebastian and Viola, Olivia represents the kind of love that can only be felt between family members. Yet, the moment Viola enters her Court, she is overcome by her charm and intelligence. Olivia, to me, represents an interesting conflict of interests: the desire to love those that are gone and mourn them against the competing desire to love in the moment. Olivia serves to represent two more themes, “styles of love” that Shakespeare wishes to include.
It is thought that Feste is the character Shakespeare wrote into the play as himself. Therefore, it is essential to examine Feste’s opinion of love. Witty, poignant and powerful, Feste’s words suggest nothing of love, but rather of the dismantling of the idea as a whole. In his conversation with Olivia, he, somewhat easily, convinces Olivia that the reason she has shut herself off from society, and from the love of countless suitors, is inherently pointless. “The more fool, madonna, to mourn for your brother’s soul, being in heaven.” (1.5.63-64) says Feste, and with those few words, Olivia’s love of family is given a whole new perspective. Feste functions to reveal Shakespeare’s own opinions on love, rather than the many forms it takes. I believe that Shakespeare presents the many forms of love through his characters to allow Feste to then ridicule them. Shakespeare presents love to the reader in countless forms, only to suggest that he, himself, might not believe in it all.
Shakespeare portrays the characters of Orsino, Viola, Olivia, Malvolio and even Andrew in love as something to laugh at. I think he makes them so enamored with whoever it is that it becomes comical (which makes sense because it is a comedy). I think that Shakespeare himself has more realistic ideas on love (seen in other plays as something not so hilarious), but uses the "honeymoon stage" as Michael so aptly described it, for humor, rather than any semblance to "normal" life or love.
I have always thought of Orsino as a brooding teenager going through the "nobody understands what I'm going through" phase of life, and I think these lines, as well as some a little later in the scene,
"There is no woman sides
That can bear the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman's heart
So big, to hold so much. They lack retention."
support that idea. I think Shakespeare uses that vague "brooding teenager" idea as a source of comedy, because really, it's funny. We've seen it in sitcoms and comedic movies all the time, because the brooding teen is so easy to make fun of. I think that while Shakespeare explores the complexities and heartbreaks of love in some other plays (Othello comes to mind), in this play he is just using the character's infatuation as a source of entertainment.
To further support this point, I give you Malvolio. He is purely used for comedy, because he is the man that breaks up the awesome party Toby, Maria, Feste, and Andrew are having, and therefore must be taught a lesson! He is there for the groundlings (lower classes seeing plays standing up at the Globe) who have probably had the same happen to them. So as a "revenge of the groundlings", you might say, Shakespeare has Maria exploit his weakness, love, for the sole purpose of comedy. For the comedy, Malvolio must be played without a personality or any emotions. As soon as Malvolio might be able to have feelings too, the audience begins to feel sorry for him, rather than vague dislike. Malvolio's case is used in the same way as Orsino: his love is mocked for the purpose of comedy.
From AJ via Mary
In these lines, Orsino claims that he is a true lover, whose comfort and
state of mental clarity only exists when his fellow lover is in his
thoughts. This statement has varying degrees of truth. I believe that
Shakespeare’s comment is not idealized, but coming from the lips of Duke
Orsino, it is.
I believe Shakespeare’s comment is partially true. Love is generally
agreed to be the most powerful of all emotions, and is one in which humans
naturally feel comfortable with as long as it is returned. Shakespeare
does limit love by saying “the creature”, implying a single person. This
statement is only true if applies to all different kinds of love, meaning
not only other people, but activities too. Once experienced, love is a
feeling that people do crazy things for in order to get back. Compared to
love, everything else becomes insignificant.
Orsino, however, is wrong in making this statement. He is not a true lover
at all. He is not actually in love with Olivia, but in love with being in
love. A first love is overpowering, and Orsino has been overpowered by it
so much that he simply wants to explore it more. Love has transformed him
into a poetic, wise man, capable of articulating some of Shakespeare’s
most beautiful verse about love. Although he is ruled by infatuation, and
not true love, infatuation produces the same results. This justifies
Orsino’s eloquent speech. Infatuation and love are very similar things,
and Orsino has been tricked into believing that he is actually in love
with Olivia.
I don’t believe this is an over-idealized version of love because, in
truth, love is idealized. The true lover is obsessed with love and
believes it is the meaning of life. Maybe Shakespeare parodies the true
lover in Twelfth Night and argues that he is lost and ridiculous. Maybe
Shakespeare believes, even though Orsino is not a true lover, that a
person overcome with infatuation could utter these words. We can’t ever
really know; we can only identify the choices and pick the best one.
Excellent posts so far. Love the idea that Shakes might not even believe in love, yet he is so good as writing about it. And Malvolio serving the groundlings experience of the emotion-- great! And as AJ said, the true lover idealizes love. My question -- do we constantly change our ideal of love over time or are we only true lovers but once?
What it has seemed like to me so far is that Shakespeare does not present an idealized or even appealing version of love, but ridicules it instead. If I'm interpreting Mary's quote correctly, Orsino is saying that what he is, is what all people truly in love are. Throughout the play, Orsino makes conceited, overly dramatic and semi-pathetic statements like this. For example, the first time he mentions Olivia (which is on the first page) he says that from the moment he saw her "that instant I was turn'd into a hart, And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E'er since pursue me". He is referencing a tragic myth, and basically saying he is dying of love for Olivia. Since Olivia will not take suitors, Orsino can not have ever gotten to know her very well, if even at all. If someone at M.A. behaved like this over someone they didn't know, they would be labeled as not only overly dramatic, but also creepy. Orsino is not a pitied and tragic figure in this play. Though he is one of the main characters he is there for amusement because of his pathetic obsession with being a poor, heartbroken person with a tragic life. I think it is highly unlikely that Shakespeare is trying to portray him as one to be envied.
Another character shown to be very much in love is Olivia. Olivia falls in love with "Cesairo" the first time they meet. They have a conversation that only lasts a few pages ( much of it spent without seeing each other)and still, Olivia manages to fall in love with Viola in that short amount of time. Shakespeare did not have Olivia fall in love with another female character disguised as a man to display an ideal love scenario, he set this up for a clever and amusing plot and for conflict. I also suspect that he is making fun of Olivia's ability to "fall in love" at first sight. She refuses to see any suitors, she is close minded to the idea of love. Then, a "man" comes and talks to her for a little and she's immediately head over heels for him. This is another example of Shakespeare creating a slightly pathetic and very dramatic character for amusement.
The entire play so far is filled with infatuated characters, all desperately in love with another character. None of these are examples of the kind of the kind of dramatic or tragic love that appears in some of his other plays, like Romeo and Juliet. It's obsessive, conflicting and amusing love. Shakespeare even portrays a man (knowingly) in love with another man. While today it's not strange to have real same-sex love stories like Brokeback mountain, I'm assuming at the time this was written, homosexuality was only incorporated into plays comically. Malvolio is a strange and creepy character who is ridiculed, even by the other characters for his love of his mistress. He is tricked into believing she loves him and it is intended to be funny. Lastly, there is Viola's love for Orsino. Since Viola seems to be a fairly normal character, this may be intended to be portrayed as "true love". However, she is in love with a character that Shakespeare has spent most of the play ridiculing, so even her infatuation has a "what does she see in him?" aspect to it. Overall it seems that the common theme accompanying love in this play is some form of amusement, none of it is portrayed in seriousness or in a way that makes it seem ideal.
Love cannot be quantified; it is there or it is not. Yet, at the same time there is a spectrum of kinds of love, if you will. The idea of “true love” is subjective and is entirely linked to circumstance and the people involved – and thus can change over time, to answer Mary’s question. That being said, from my perspective (and that of many of my peers), Orsino’s love for Olivia is not true love.
In these lines Orsino describes how most aspects of his love for Olivia fluctuate, except for the “constant image of the creature that is belov’d.” At first, I took “image” to mean Olivia’s physical form, her beauty. But, the side notes translate “image” to mean “idea.” Regardless of how the word is interpreted, Orsino is speaking more about being in love with beauty and being in love with love more than he is speaking about being in love with Olivia. Later on (lines 91-101) Orsino describes women as being incapable of loving as truly and deeply as men. Not only does this make Orsino’s egotistical personality evident, but it shows Orsino knows little about women and their side of things in relationships – something men truly in love would be more tuned into.
I do not see the rest of the love triangle as “true love” either. Love is about knowing on a deeper level who someone is, and Olivia obviously has not achieved this with Viola. As for Viola, I want to wait until the end of the play to weigh in; though she fell in love with Orsino almost instantly, she has continuously gotten to know him as the play goes on. The only “true love” I see at this point in the play is not romantic, but familial love (like Ross mentioned), as seen in Olivia’s and Viola’s mourning.
However, this does not mean Shakespeare is also doomed to false love. I think what he presents as love is idealized and cliché, but this serves a purpose. Like most of the previous posters mention, Shakespeare ridicules the various sorts of love he portrays. I think the only way he could craft a comedy using the different scenarios (love at first sight, in love with beauty, in love with yourself, etc.) is because he knows the differences between these types of love and the ever-elusive “true love.”
Eric Slamovich
In these lines Shakespeare does create an over idealized version of love, but his description of Orsino’s love for Olivia is not incorrect. Orsino is simply in the stage of expressing his love for Olivia, resulting in him not being able to focus on anything else. As written in the MA Voice, Orsino is in “The hopeless romantic stage”, where he is constantly thinking about Olivia. Although this may not be the best example, it works for Orsino, until we find out, later in the play, whether or not Olivia has the same feelings for Orsino as he does for her. Like Michael and others have stated, Orsino is in the honeymoon stage during which he carries a grand amount of love for Olivia. However, I think that as the play progresses, Shakespeare will describe Orsino as growing out of this stage, but still “occasionally” expressing his feelings towards Olivia.
Throughout the whole play Shakespeare has illustrated Orsino as a person who is constantly obsessed with love. Therefore, these lines are correct because Shakespeare has written during the early parts of the play that Orsino exaggerates his love for Olivia frequently. Orsino reminds me of the male teenager who is in the deepest stage of puberty where he is constantly thinking of girls. When Orsino says, “for such as I am, all true lovers are, unstaid and skittish in all motions else, save in the constant image of the creature, that is beloved”(2.4); he is incorrect. I think it is very one dimensional that Shakespeare describes love as a definition; this is what one does when they are in love and why one does it. For many people love is a entirely different definition. A different “Orsino” could be in love with Olivia, but does not need to be consumed with Olivia every second of his life.
I think in what I have read so far that Shakespeare is really toying with the reader by posing the question of what love really is. Orsino mightily believes that he is in love with Olivia, however I feel that he is in love with thinking of the thought of him being in love with Olivia. It gives him something to think about during the whole day, instead of (as seen in the movie) complaining about his injured body part. Orsino always gets what he wants, and for the first time Olivia is not at his doorstep beginning for his love. Orsino enjoys the expedition of trying to seduce Olivia who plays the “hard to get woman”. Although Orsino has not found out what true love is yet, when Olivia shares the exact same feelings towards Orsino, it will be interesting to see how Orsino reacts and to what final destination does their relationship (if any) ends up at.
I think that Orsino's view of love is somewhat childish. As Michael said, it points to the "honeymoon" phase of love. Through Orsino, Shakespeare is presenting a stylized version of love that only people who want to believe that they are true lovers can buy into. Olivia, Viola, Orsino, Sebastian; all of the main players in the plot fall in love in a matter of days or even seconds. All of these characters believe deeply in the concept of love. They want to be sensitive and understanding, but to me it seems that the quickness with which they fall in love is indicative of a shallowness to their love.
Perhaps this stylization of love stems from the fact that Shakespeare is stylizing life. Theater isn't reality by any stretch of the imagination: it shows only what the audience needs to see, and (well, for ol' Billy at least) only portrays the most emotionally charged things it can muster. Events in many peoples' lives do resemble theater, only less over the top or extravagant. Thus, Shakespeare is presenting what we want to see when we think of a lover because he is stylizing the archetype and putting it onstage.
Orsino is not meant to sound childish. I think that Shakespeare wrote him to truly believe what he is saying. He is the "lover." Someone else can be the fool, someone else can be the conniver, someone else can be the graceful lady, but Orsino is the lover. We all have a bit of him in us, just as we all have a bit of Feste and Viola and Malvolio and Andrew. I think that Orsino is not a "deep" character, per se: he seems enraptured with love and love alone. He is an archetype, just as many or Shakespeare's characters are, which allows the viewer to both see parallels to the conflicts in Shakespeare's plays both in the external and internal worlds.
Shakespeare does not present an over idealized version of love through Orsino's words. Love may be defined in one word, but the actual feeling of the emotion is different for everyone. While Olivia saying these lines in 2.4 would seem strange, they are natural for Orsino. He does not over romanticize the words due to the fact that he is such a romanticist to begin with. Orsino actually feels the "unstaid and skittish" feelings that he thinks comes from "all true lovers". The duke innately puts love on a pedestal, and can moreover only think about the face of that beloved one.
Since this bold form of love Orsino feels is due to his personality, it is not necessarily correct, but at the same time it is not incorrect. Every human has his or her own definition of love and his or her own realization of how that feels. Orsino may not be feeling and thus pursuing a sort of love that will succeed, but if those are his desires then it is correct for him. This play excels at portraying the many interpretations of different feelings of love.
Olivia, for example, acts in completely different manners than Orsino. Her love for her dead brother is much more solemn than Orsino's love for her, yet she still loves in an extreme. Rather than allowing her love to bubble to the extent of Orsino, she lets it simmer. It is still very present and serious, yet Shakespeare found a way to express another sort of love. Orsino is not incorrect in his romanticism, but neither is Olivia in her mourning. This play encompasses the many extremes of love, Orsino and Olivia being just two examples.
I believe that these lines are an over idealized version of love. The lines describe a man who doesn't even know the woman he's in love with. For that their love cant be true an the whole theme of love is flawed. To answer the question of is Orsino correct, He isn't.What he thinks that love is really is a joke. When he says "for as i am all true lovers all" he thinks that his falling in love is normal compared to other love situations. This perpetuates the over idealized concept of love.
I think that when looking at the "love" situations in Twelfth Night, I think that Shakespeare does two things to describe his concept of love. I think his subtle and obvious references to love show how serious he is about the concept. In other words i believe that when Duke Orsino falls in love with Olivia without knowing her and Olivia falling in love with Viola so quickly, shows that Shakespeare is making fun of love. But the conversation between Orsino and Cesario, one that definitely had some sexual tension, is a subtle way of Shakespeare showing what he thinks of love. That it doesn't have to be a cliche of love at first sight. Instead it could be subtle and obscure at times. Sorry if this whole things doesn't make sense.
Lastly, I want to touch upon the theme of love in a different light. I wondered why Shakespeare took the risk of having a love relationship between two men. I can infer that homosexuality wasn't taken lightly in epoch of Puritanism. It's just interesting and I'm wondering what was the overall reaction from this. If anyone knows anything about the subject i would love to hear your response. Thanks
Dashon
Love the questions you pose at the end of your post. Let's talk about this in class!!
Mary
I do not believe that these lines are in fact and over-idealized version of love because there are many people today whether they think they are in love or not feel this way. All the time whether people have been in a relationship for 5 years or 5 weeks people get the jitters just being around that person. It's something about them they just cant figure out and they fall head over heals. They have trouble speaking and they see nothing wrong with them. Its like a persons first crush or for the believers out there love at first sight. The possibility of the love that Shakespeare describes actually happening to someone in that exact way is definitely a stretch and thus understandable as to why some people may see this as over-idealized.
In relativity to Orsino this may seem normal. After seeing his actions throughout the whole book and noticing how he can be over dramatic makes these lines not as powerful as they would have been if they were said once and he was not such a dramatic person. Since we have seen his tendency to love everything these lines are somewhat normal. He is wrong in saying that all true lovers fell this way when they are in love. Much of the time people that fall in love are not emotional about it and don't feel this way. He is right though because there are people that go crazy when they find the right person and have that crush.
This love that is portrayed in this play is really interesting. There are so many different concepts of love that are brought it. There is Orsino that is just head over heels dramatic for Olivia and he just feels that he cannot live without her. The other side of it is with viola ( Cesario ) who is in love with Orsino, but she can't let him know that because she is in disguise. Then on the other hand Olivia is in love with Cesario which was so unexpected due to the mourning of her brother. The whole love triangle is such a stereotypical idea that we see in movies everyday today. The difference is that in movies the love triangle that you see is not even close to as elegantly expressed as it is in the book. If this book were written in a modern version it would be boring and all of the love that is portrayed wouldn't be interesting. It is how Shakespeare writes this love story that keeps me connected to it and keeps me wondering.
Twelfth Night, written between 1599 and 1602, is a comedic play built around the theme of love. Similar to Amalie's point, I too believe that instead of trying to portray a “real” idea of love, Shakespeare intends to mock it. Present day society perpetuates an image of true love that is often over idealized. Each year, hundreds of novels, movies, and television shows are created in an attempt to draw viewers by presenting them with a “true” tale of love. Although expressions of idealized love may not have been the norm 400 years ago, Shakespeare may have been fed up with the romanticism of love and thus, felt compelled to mock it using his characters in Twelfth Night.
Shakespeare uses Orsino to parody a victim of true love. Because he has (supposedly) met the girl of his dreams, Orsino views everything as wonderful. Orsino hears the “music” of love and requests his band to “play on” (1.1). Orsino imagines everything to be a prospect of love (music, flowers, etc). Masterfully, Shakespeare is able to parody “the lover,” a figure that has been portrayed since the beginning of storytelling. Through Orsino’s embellished musings about love, Shakespeare conveys to the audience the insanity surrounding the image of love.
As Ross aptly suggests, Feste is the character that Shakespeare modeled after himself. Reflecting Shakespeare’s attitude on love, Feste is the one that often satirizes love throughout Twelfth Night. Feste comments on Orsino’s “pains” and attitude on love calling Orsino’s mind “opal” or always changing (2.4). Feste is used as a portal for Shakespeare to comment on the idea of love expressed by his own characters.
Love is completely subjective. If you ask a cynic, love is merely for idiots who believe that their life can be completed by another persons affection. If you ask a hopeless romantic, love is the end-all-be-all of human existence and is the answer to every problem.
Personally, I think there are the extremely lucky people in the universe who do find the one true person they are destined to be with. These people need to live on their own island out of the way of everyone else. Love is very circumstantial. Everyone is able to find someone they love wherever they are. The sheer amount of people on this planet provides for that.
Shakespeare's interpretation of love only applies to the lucky people on the island. They live in their own world where nothing matters except their significant other. Shakespeare, while plagiarizing right and left, long ago began offering people the romantic and perfect view of love that they wished to hear. Shakespeare offers a view of love that applies to 5% of the population, but that the other 95% wishes were theirs.
It doesn't really bother me that Shakespeare makes love as beautiful and amazing as he does. Every author is entitled to their opinion, and every audience is entitled to their own interpretation of that authors work. Shakespeare allows people to be amazed and inspired by his wording, but he also offers the 95% a somewhat delusional interpretation.
One thing that I love about Shakespeare is how he portrays different types of love through each of his characters. There is Orsino’s love for Olivia, which seems so passionate and forced because Orsino is so driven to achieve any hint of reciprocation from Olivia. Like AJ said, he loves being in love and Olivia is merely the object of his current affections. Then we have Viola who keeps her love a secret for the majority of the play. She is also one of the few characters who I believe is truly in love with someone because she sacrifices her own chance at happiness with Orsino by trying to get Olivia to return his love for her. She loves him so much that she would do anything to make him happy, even set him up with another woman. Another example of love is Olivia, who is selfish in her love and does whatever she can to get Cesario/Viola to love her back. I find her love very similar to Orsino’s: they are both simply infatuated with someone, but not truly in love.
I like this portrayal of “love” very much because I can easily compare infatuation with true love through the interactions between the different characters. Reading about characters like Orsino and Olivia gives me some insight on what real love is because I can see what is definitely NOT love. It helps me to appreciate Viola’s character since her actions are some of the few pure ones in the whole play, but I might not see that as easily without Orsino or Olivia.
Overall, I don’t think that Shakespeare idealizes love at all. He is showing it from different angles and puts it all into a few characters for us to witness as they interact with one another. Love means something completely different for everyone and this can only be shown in a play if each character has a different image or idea of what love is to them. To Orsino, it is being in love that he loves; to Olivia, love is infatuation; and to Viola, it is doing anything for her love, regardless of herself. Therefore, I believe Orsino’s vision of love to be incorrect since he thinks that all lovers feel the same when in love, which Shakespeare also shows is incorrect with each different portrayal of love that he inserts into the play. Orsino also suggests that lovers are “skittish” with everything else, but Viola is the evidence that disproves that statement. She keeps a level head during the entire play, even though she feels just as much, if not more, love than the other characters. And even if we don’t agree with this interpretation or belief of what true love is, the reader can decide for him or her self what he or she thinks it is by exploring the other characters that Shakespeare presents in the play.
Shakespeare presents an exaggerated view of love but not an unrealistic one. He embodies the essence of love but, like all writers, he embellishes for effect. Although I have never been in love and therefore can’t really know anything about love actually is, I know that one of the reasons that Shakespeare’s writings have survived for such a long time is because he is accurate. The way he presents love strikes a chord with the audience. He hits the truth of the matter and describes it with incredible insight and artistry; that is why they pay to see his plays.
However, if Shakespeare displayed love “accurately” his stories would be boring. If lovers did not experience love at first sight his plays would be 10 hours long – going through the first encounter, then the first date and so on. I would also like to point out that he never gets passed the marriage – they fall and love and get married but he never shows the rest of their lives. (He only explores marriage in plays like Macbeth where they have already been married for a while; never does he show both aspect of love in one play.) And to answer Mary’s question about being true lovers only once, to Orsino you are only a true lover at the beginning when everything is new and exciting. However, I think that love changes throughout a relationship and it is all “true” if the love is always pure.
Unlike his more serious plays in which he tries to describe and explain the nature of love, Twelfth Night is a comedy so everything is exaggerated – if someone is in love, they are head over heals; if someone is angry they are murderously angry. This is what people come to see. They do not see a play to see ordinary people who are indifferent about their emotions; they come to see choices and stakes. However, the comical side of the play makes some of the love superficial, such as the love of Orsino and Olivia, which is so quick to change when it is “necessary” to make everything work out. Orsino’s quote is about being love struck, which I have never experience but has been so often described in books, plays, poems, songs and movies that there must be some truth to it. Olivia falling for Cesario is only funny if Olivia is head-over-heels in love. Malvolio is comical because he is so in love that he will go so outside his character and completely play the fool when he thinks it is what his lover wants. This is not realistic but lovers do to stupid and ridiculous things. People can relate to this.
These lines exemplify Shakespeare's comical approach towards love in this play and in my opinion express and over idealized version of love. Orsino is characteristically overly emotional and in my mind, his being head over heels in love is overly glorified. Shakespeare has so far only portrayed love as a quick realization that takes no time to procure. Similar to Michael, the love portrayed in the play is very 'narrow' and only gives the reader an abridged version of love.
In Orsino's, Viola's, and Olivia's case, they fell in love relatively quickly and in Twelfth Night, Shakespeare took no time developing this side of the character's love for each other. In stead of drawing out this process and creating it remarkably beautiful, Shakespeare purposefully decided to have his characters fall in love almost instantly, making the love exhibited in the play comical. Instead of portraying love as a wonderful feeling that one experiences only a few times in life, Shakespeare makes a joke out of it. None of the characters in Twelfth Night, who are in love, have taken the time to know the person who she or he loves. Its ironical that these characters exhibit the most tender of feelings towards their lover yet don't even know who she/he really is.
In my mind, love is supposed to be wonderful; an experience that should be cherished. By having the majority of the characters in Twelfth Night fall in love, Shakespeare is down grading the value of love. He is simply implying that true love an adoration can be found by everyone and that it isn't as special as everyone makes it out to be. I think that this portrayal of love is due in part to Shakespeare's one belief of love. In my opinion, I think that Shakespeare laughs at the public opinion of love, the love at first sight, and his writing clearly depicts this.
Daniel Pulgram
I think that Shakespeare intentionally presents an over-idealized version of love. In fact, I think that that is almost the whole point of the comedy. I agree with Cara and I think that Shakespeare is rather ridiculing the idea of "true" or pure love, rather than promoting the concept. Shakespeare presents many versions of love; but very few of them could really be characterized as true, even though the characters believe themselves to be in-love. Take Orcino, for instance, he feels he exemplifies being truly in love: "For as I am, all true lovers are" yet proves at the end of the play to not be really a true lover at all. Orcino, in just one scene, switches from being Olivia's "true lover" to engaging himself to mary Viola, without so much as a second thought of Olivia. He could not truly be so in love for him to ditch that love that he said he had for Olivia so easily.
This theme of true love is constant throughout the play. Sebastian marries Olivia at the end, after hardly knowing her at all. He doesn't have true love, he just wants to get laid and have the safety of entering into a higher-up position. Olivia, for her part, may feel infatuated with Cicario, (ie. Viola), but upon realizing that the person she fell in love with was only pretending to woo her and that the man she married never knew her at all, Olivia still acts in much the same way. She, like Orcino, could not be truly in love without knowing about the person she/he was in love with.
What is very interesting about this play, is that the best example of: "true love" that occurs, is an arrangement that is frowned upon by society. Sir Toby and Maria, comical figures throughout the play, are the only people who know each other well at the end. They don't seem in-love with the idea of being in-love, as Orcino was, for example, or have that much even to personally gain by the relationship, like Sebastian. Even though the marriage of a relatively wealthy knight and a servant would be frowned upon, at least at the time, it is truest example of love in the play. They are the only ones who really know who they are marrying.
Shakespeare's ridiculing of love is not just confined to this play. In "Mid-Summer Nights Dream", Shakespeare uses "magic fairy dust" to create and undo love between the characters. In much the same way, Shakespeare is ridiculing those who claim to be in-love all of a sudden, as if they had just had fairy dust in their eyes. Shakespeare's portrayal of love in 12th night and other of his plays shows how, in many ways, "true love", instantly created, can make fools of us all.
IIn Orsino’s quote, he is saying that all true lovers are fickle and capricious about all things except the object of their affection. The person they are in love with is the only thing they can truly focus on, the only thing that matters.
Orsino is not correct in his assumption that his behavior is the behavior of all true lovers. While I see this as an exaggeration, Orsino has not completely missed the mark. There is this element of love that makes the person one is in love with seem like the most important thing in the world, especially as Micheal mentioned above during the crush/honeymoon phase. There are countless romantic comedies that feature the protagonist unable to focus on anything other than the object of their affections, lost in sighs and daydreams. In the same way that romantic comedies present a skewed view of reality, Shakespeare shows us a world in which the effects of love are exaggerated in order to illustrate the ridiculous power of love. Shakespeare is poking fun at people in love to show its power and to show the lengths we will go for love, however ridiculous or irrational they may be.
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare looks at the comedy of love and what it does to people. A lot of the characters are smart people, yet they end up doing such ridiculous things. They lie to others and to themselves. One example is Malvolio’s delusions that Olivia is in love with him; all it takes is subtle suggestion to make believe that he is going to be a count. They manipulate one another and allow themselves to be manipulated in turn and generally embarrass themselves all in the name of love. In fact everything Olivia, Orsino, Viola, Malvolio, and Andrew do is for love. Love makes fools of us all. The fact that some of the characters are not truly in love with “the creature that is belov’d” just serves to emphasize the power of love. Even when if its just a crush, it still causes the characters to do ridiculous, hilarious things.
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