Catherine McCormack
EN 101.16
Twelfth
Night
November 20, 2013
The
Pain of Love
William
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night deals
with a complicated love triangle between Olivia, Viola and Orsino, and the
troubles it causes between many of the other characters within the play. Both a romance and a comedy, this play helps
express the struggles that love causes on those who are in love. Although this play has a happy ending,
Shakespeare is able to show the pain that love can cause overall.
Many
of the characters within the play, especially Olivia, Orsino, and Viola view
love as a threat, a challenge that causes them to steer away from their true
self. Love to them causes pain and not
the joy that one expects to get out of love.
The play starts off with Orsino exclaiming that “If music be the food of
love, play on: Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken,
and so die” (Act 1, Scene I). Orsino
says for himself that he would rather be so full of music so he has no more
room to love, for it makes him sick.
Olivia continues on with this negative idea of love when she compares
the idea of love to that of a “plague” (Act 1, Scene V). She feels as if being in love is the same as
being sick with a deadly disease and would much rather continue to be in sorrow
of the loss of her brother then have to deal with love. These two cases put into perspective how
unwilling Olivia and Orsino are when it comes to falling in love. Viola oftentimes see loves as a diseases as
well, for she is truly love with Orsino, one who has no idea who she is. She goes out of her to hurt herself trying to
“woo” Olivia for Orsino because she cares so deeply for him.
There
are often examples of love, however, can lead to violent measures even more so
than the negative feelings that each character feels. Olivia tries to kill
Viola, dressed as Cesario, who she is in love with, because she felt as if Cesario
had betrayed her, stating that Orsino is allowed to do “Even what is please my
lord, that shall become of him” (Act 5, Scene I). Olivia takes extreme measures both in
expressing the pain she feels when thinking about love, and when she feels
betrayed by love. These characters fear
the idea of love because it brings so much struggle and pain in their
life. Olivia and Viola have both been
through pain, Olivia loosing a brother and Viola thinking she lost a brother,
they both know what pain is and because they feel like love is painful as well,
they do not want to get involved with it.
The
struggles and pain that love causes within this play can relate to service when
the students’ parents work long hours and put themselves at risk in order to
give their child everything they can.
The love that these parents have for the children is so great that they
are willing to go through the struggle of long work hours and strenuous jobs in
order to provide their kids with the life that they deserve. The teacher that I work with told me that a
number of these parents work two jobs, double shifts every day just so they can
provide for their kids. Because of the
love they have for their children, they go through the struggle of working all
the time and the pain of not getting enough sleep or enough money for what they
do just so they can provide enough for their kid.
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