Relationships In Twelfth Night English Literature Essay

Twelfth night is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601-02 as a Twelfth Night’s entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. Twelfth is a romantic comedy and romantic love is a main focus of the play, which reveals itself in one of the first lines where Curio asks “Will you go hunt, my lord? ” (16) And Duke Orsino replies “why, so I do, the noblest that I have. Oh, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence. That instant was I turned into a hart, and my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me” (20). Though the play ends on a happy note, Shakespeare shows that love can cause pain as well.

The first character whom the audience is introduced to in the play is Duke Orsino, a powerful nobleman in the country of Illyria. He seems to be madly and passionately in love with Olivia, who does not return his love. Olivia is a wealthy, beautiful and noble Illyrian lady, her reason for rejecting Orsino’s love is that she is mourning for her deceased brother and she will not marry for 7 years. Orsino claims to be terribly heart-sick and mopes around the house in sorrow. Olivia seems to be an irrelevant excuse for Duke Orsino to listening to moody music and his association of music being the love of food in the plays opening lines “if music must be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, that appetite may sicken, and so die.” (i.1.1-5) these lines seem to have erotic desire with a gluttonous craving for food aligned to it. Duke Orsino’s opening seems to be playful and melancholy, with abrupt change in moods, this shows that Duke Orsino is fickle minded. One can concur that Orsino is trying to make himself suffer because he only concentrates on himself, as we can read when he talks about himself with the repetition of words like “me”, “I”, “mine”, He seems to be more in love with the idea of being in love than being in love with Olivia. As the play unfolds it becomes apparent that Orsino actually doesn’t know Olivia, he has seen her and fallen for her, all his contacts with her has been through his messenger who plead for his case.

Viola is the major character in the play, she is twelfth nights gender-bending heroine. The survivor of a shipwreck separates her from her brother; she washes up on the shore of Illyria where she decides to cross dress as a boy and take up a job in Duke’s court as a boy servant named “Cesario”. Viola meets Duke Orsino and falls in love with him but her adopted persona prevents her from expressing her love for the duke. Orsino wishes her to court Olivia for him, placing her in a strange and difficult position that becomes worse when Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Thus Viola, Olivia and Duke Orsino enter into a strange and complicated love triangle.

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Viola is placed in an awkward situation where she neither can reveal her true identity nor can she express her love for the duke , one can also see that viola often makes indirect statements of her being in love with a person like the Duke himself “off your complexion … About your years my lord. ” (ii.4.25-28), but the duke doesn’t understand Viola’s statement. Duke also finds an attraction with Viola instead of her being a man; he admires his lips and voice “Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious. Thy small pipe is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, and all is semblative a woman’s part ” (i.4.30-33). There are a few homosexual relationships in the play including the one which Viola and Olivia share, Olivia refuses to give up on Viola and continues to find excuses to meet him (cesario) even after viola rejects her. She gives him a locket as a token of her love. These homosexual relationships in the play are introduced to make the text interesting and Shakespeare skilfully introduces double meaning and avoids censorship.

Another instance of homosexual relationship is the one between Antonio and Sebastian, the twin brother of Viola who is saved and cared for by Antonio after the shipwreck. Sebastian believes that his sister died in the shipwreck and now has no family and he decides to wander through earth with no care. Antonio and Sebastian are clearly close friends, but the language Antonio uses seems to suggest something stronger. Antonio is willing to sacrifice everything for his friend, giving up his time, money, and safety to follow him because he has grown fond of Sebastian . He begs Sebastian to let him be his servant and decides to go even when he learns that Sebastian is headed for a dangerous place filled with Antonio’s enemies. Moreover, Antonio’s language carries a strong emotional charge: “If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant” (ii.1.30-31). Antonio’s words can be seen as carrying an obvious homoerotic charge.