The Negativity of Love in Twelfth Night Essay

1298 Words6 Pages
Through his use of verbal language techniques and devices, Shakespeare develops loving as an unwanted, painful, disease throughout his play Twelfth Night that ultimately can turn men into monsters. He both conveys this warning to the audience and makes the play interesting and attention grabbing for them by skilfully using metaphors, comparison, emotional language, rhyme and allusion. Twelfth Night is a timeless piece of literature thanks to the intricate verbal techniques that Shakespeare weaves with a purpose into the play. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare portrays love as a “hunger” to show that we are pained by it when we cannot satisfy it, drawing similarities between the ache of loving someone to “hunger pains”. He also uses a metaphor to convey his opinion that the need for love is as great as the need for food. When Orsino bemoans his love for Lady Olivia, he requests that “If music be the food of love, play on”, wishing for “excess of it” so that “The appetite may sicken and so die”. This is to be taken metaphorically as Orsino expressing his love sickness. This opening quote sets up that both that he is melodramatic and that he thinks he loves Olivia at the very start. Shakespeare uses it as opening lines to introduce the idea of love being harmful and painful from the very beginning of the play, truly making it a theme throughout the play. It conveys to the audience that he doesn’t want to love her but can’t seem to help it, which in turn makes audience question if they would love if they had a choice in it. Shakespeare creates a sense of Pity for Orsino and his situation in the audience, with him almost physically hurting because of the strength of the emotional pain love is causing him to endure. As many people will have felt a similar way before – if not as intense a pain – from the very start of Twelfth Night we can empathise with the characters.
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