twelfth night essay about love

Despite Twelfth Night ’s comic action and happy ending, Shakespeare paints an ambiguous picture of romance and infatuation in the play. Love is generally represented as something sudden and irresistible, something that attacks its victim from the outside in a fashion similar to a disease.

Every major character in Twelfth Night experiences some form of desire or love. Duke Orsino is in love with Olivia . Viola falls in love with Orsino, while disguised as his pageboy, Cesario .

Love plays a major role in “Twelfth Night,” and Shakespeare addresses true love, self-love, and friendship in a very compelling and interesting way. Love is great to read about because everyone deserves a little love.

Analyze the love speeches in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night: 2.2.18-26, 33-41, and 3.1.152-164. How do 'mistaken identities', conflicts, and contrasts contribute to the success of Twelfth...

Love as a Cause of Suffering. Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play’s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain.

Beneath all of the cross-dressing and mistaken identities, Twelfth Night probes some deep truths about the nature of love. When Olivia falls in love with Viola at first sight, when Viola is disguised as Cesario, whom does she fall in love with, exactly?

In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare portrays love as something wild and passionate, something that takes people almost out of their senses and makes them do things they normally would not do,...

Twelfth Night may not be one of Shakespeare's most familiar plays, and it may not seem at first glance that a story about a Countess in mourning, a lovesick Duke, and a cross-dressing woman recently separated from her twin by shipwreck, has much to say to a modern audience.

As in all of Shakespeare’s comedies, Twelfth Night treats the obstacles faced by lovers in fulfilling their desires. In an influential essay, “The Two Worlds of Shakespearean Comedy,” Sherman Hawkins has detected two basic structural patterns in Shakespeare’s comedies.

Summary: Act I, scene i. If music be the food of love, play on, . . . O spirit of love, how quick and fresh are thou. . . . In the land of Illyria, Duke Orsino enters, attended by his lords. Orsino is hopelessly in love with the beautiful Lady Olivia and pines away for her.