'Love And Disguise In The Twelfth Night Essay\r'

'The art of have it off suggests that this mixed emotion cannot be easily delineate; it must instead be conceptualized inwardly the confines of phrase and images. One writer that mastered this presentation of bang is William Shakespe be. by dint of his sonnets and suffers, he immortalized the concept of revere for readers of all(a) told generations. His comedy Twelfth Night in particular presents turn in as an pernicious object which throws come out soldieryy tricks along its path. Through the artful use of language and disguise, this play presents love as a comic yet sentimental quest.\r\n The premier words in this play argon spoken by a while in love †â€Å"If music be the food of love, play on:/ retrovert me excess of it, that surfeiting, /The appetite may come d feature and so die” (I,i,1-3). Duke Orsino is lovesick for chick Olivia, who, unfortunately, has gone to great lengths to avoid his pursuit. He uses a metaphor comparing himse lf to a hart hunted by love’s â€Å"cruel hounds” (I, i, 22). This use of negatively connoted language reveals to the reader how much disoblige and suffering the Duke feels due to this unrequited love.\r\n The plat becomes ironic when the shipwrecked genus genus Viola chooses to disguise herself as a eunuch, a serving boy, in the house of Orsino in order to softly pass the time until she can decree out if her twin brother has survived the very(prenominal) disaster at sea. In doing so, she finds that she has locomote in love with him but cannot distil it because she is masquerading as a man. Her job is to dally Olivia, who is continuing to disguise herself in her melancholy garb to thwart Orsino, which creates a that complication in that Olivia herself falls for the man that she thinks Viola is †Cesario. Thus, a triangle forms: Viola loves Orsino who loves Olivia who loves Viola (as Cesario). Clearly the point that love is confusing is w ell-taken.\r\n Yet, this play has much to label about the complexities of love. Olivia marvels at the quick approach of her feelings: â€Å"How now!/Even so apace may one catch the pesterer?” (I, v, 206-207). Again, love is presented here as an unsoundness to be avoided. TO cast off matters worse, Malvolio, Olivia’s transverse servant, carries a secret love for his mistress. When Olivia’s uncle and his friend, who also loves Olivia, find out, they set him up for embarrassment. The love letter he ‘finds’ compels him to make romantic gestures toward Olivia, who has him banished for madness.\r\n The further irony is that the choices of love interests in this play defy reason. Orsino unquestionably asserts that nothing and nobody can â€Å" digest the beating of so strong a love life/ as love doth gift my heart;” (II, iv, 72-73) for a woman that has un mop uply spurned him. Olivia, on the other transcend, has fall in love with a disguised woman: â€Å"I love thee so, that maugre all thy pride,/Nor wit nor reason can my passion hide/” (III, i, 121-122). Viola, disguised as a man, loves a man, and Malvolio has made the unfortunate sneak of loving a woman out of his class. Of course Andrew has been convinced to love Olivia as well, out of Toby’s vicious and usurious needs.\r\n The role that disguises play in the love situations above cannot be ignored. With the attainable exception of the Duke, nobody is who they seem to be on the outside. Typically, Olivia would not fall for some other female, but the traits in the person she perceives to be a male jive with her own desire for independence and autonomy. Likewise, Viola knows that she cannot officially announce her love for the Duke because she is disguised as a male. However, he is drawn to her because he must somehow sense her femininity.\r\n Olivia is dissemble to still be in tribulation for he r brother’s death by hiding herself under a veil, though the period for mourning has long since passed. Further, when Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother enters the picture, Olivia naturally gravitates to him, resulting in hilarious results. Oddly, he accepts her end of marriage only minutes later coming in contact with her.\r\nThis scarce goes to show that the characters in this play are not serious about love while they are disguised. It is characterized as a galled, cancerous emotion, yet they still render it. When the characters finally are able to bear witness their emotions as their true selves, the love seems more substantial. The marriage of Sebastian and Olivia is false until she realize that she hasn’t married Cesario, but really Sebastian. Likewise, the hour that the Duke discovers that Cesario is really the woman Viola, he offers his hand to her.\r\n What appears to be a happy ending is itself disguised. The reader must won der what has compelled these individuals to admit their undying love then swap their minds so quickly. If love is as painful as they might suggest, why trace it in the first place? The root word of the happy ending is shadowed in the forced marriage by work out of Toby and Maria, and the angry outburst of the wronged Malvolio. The marriages of the play are reduced to a farce, which the clown around can only sum up with a song.\r\nReference\r\nShakespeare, William. Twelfth Night. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1996.\r\n'