Exploring the Theme of Love in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night
Love is an everlasting theme throughout literature. In the play Twelfth Night, Shakespeare explores and illustrates three different types of love—true love, self-love, and friendship. For each type of love, Shakespeare created its own characters to represent it, and these characters and their love played a major role in the play.
True Love
There are three romantic love stories in the play. In the opening, Duke Orsino expresses his deep love for Countess Olivia. Later, in the following scene, Viola disguises herself as a man named Cesario and serves the Duke. Soon after, Viola finds herself falling in love with Orsino, and she is asked by the Duke to woo Olivia for him. To make things more complicated, Olivia falls in love with Cesario, who is actually Viola in disguise. In fact, Duke Orsino’s love is a kind of lust; he has never even met Olivia and is just attracted by her grieving for her family. Olivia’s love is a kind of illusion; she is attracted by some idiosyncrasies of Cesario, not the person.
Viola’s love is, unlike the love of the other two characters, a genuine feeling toward her beloved, Orsino. This true love never changes throughout the play; it is a main clue that leads the whole play. For example, in Act I, Scene IV, Viola expresses the intense feeling inside her heart: “Yet, a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.” And then in Act II, Scene IV, Viola gives Orsino many hints during the conversation, such as, “My father had a daughter loved a man, as it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship,” but the Duke still cannot understand her intimate feelings.
Viola’s state of love is loyal, sincere, unrequited, and selfless—this is what true love is. When Orsino asks Viola to woo Olivia for him, she does so and does it scrupulously. She really tries her best to help Orsino find his happiness, even though she is always loving Orsino and knows that it will harm her own happiness. What a great love it is!
Self-Love
Self-love is a common psychological state of human beings, and it varies in degree with different people. In the play, it is obvious that Malvolio is the character with the problem of self-love. “Oh, you are sick of self-love,” said Olivia, who agrees with this point of view. Malvolio always fancies himself as an intellectual, fashionable, and hugely attractive person. For instance, as Maria’s penetrating analysis in Act II, Scene III states, “The devil a puritan that he is, or anything constantly, but a time-pleaser; an affected ass, that cons state without book and utters it by great swarths: the best persuaded of himself, so crammed, as he thinks, with excellencies, that it is his grounds of faith that all that look on him love him.” Also, in Act II, Scene V, Malvolio behaves like a supreme narcissist, reading the forged letter and proudly believing that Olivia loves him. Here is what is in his mind: “I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of late; she did praise my leg being cross-gartered; and in this, she manifests herself to my love.” Malvolio is such an incorrigible egotist, and that is the reason why people around him detest him but also sympathize with him about his suffering in the end.
Malvolio’s self-love is an important subplot in the play, but compared to other characters, his fate is melancholy. Malvolio is abused and ridiculed by other characters, and he is also left out of the reconciliations in the ending. Malvolio’s state of love is insubstantial, wishful, superficial, unilateral, sarcastic, intolerant, and awkward.
Friendship Love
Another type of love expressed in Twelfth Night is friendship, which exists among many pairs of characters. One character who values friendship so much is Antonio, who is not only Sebastian’s savior but also his faithful friend. Moreover, Antonio gives his purse to Sebastian and fights for Cesario because he mistakes one twin for another. Antonio once said to Sebastian: “If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant,” and “I could not stay behind you: my desire,” which shows his passion for Sebastian. The second deep friendship is between Orsino and Cesario; Orsino regards Cesario as a favorite young lad and a very close friend. So he trusts Cesario and tells him his inner love: “Unclasp’d to thee the book even of my secret soul.”
Friendship makes up the main plot of the play and enriches the emotional connection between characters. The state of love of Antonio is passionate, voluntary, and maybe a little bit exaggerated, which is the reason why some readers consider it a kind of homosexual love. The state of love of Orsino is natural, equal (considering the difference in their social strata), and respectful. Orsino’s sincere friendship love and Viola’s true love form the basis for their friendship love sublimated into real love.
To sum up, Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is an enduring masterpiece that brilliantly represents the theme of love. Every character he created in the play has its own personality and idea of love. It is a great treat for everyone to read and watch this play, since love is sweet, and we all deserve it.