How is romantic love depicted in the play? What points does Shakespeare seem to be making about romance?
In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare makes the audience wary and yet in awe of romantic love by portraying it as something very powerful and often uncontrollable that can be both good and bad. Using contrasting imagery of both joy and pain and insanity, he suggests love can be nebulous, unpredictable and sometimes untrustworthy but in
its ‘true’, raw and ‘correct’ form, it can be the ultimate way to happiness.
Firstly, Shakespeare portrays romantic love as a sort of overpowering madness or illness that disruptively strikes people without warning and that can cause pain. It cannot be controlled; instead it controls people. This idea is immediately established at the beginning of the play in Act I, Scene I. We are introduced to a moping Orsino who is hopelessly besotted by the countess Olivia. He insists his servants must continue playing music, ‘the food of love’, so that he will ‘surfeit’ on it and no longer hunger for it. It is like he is trying to drive out some kind of illness or infection. Love has essentially conquered him until the point where he’s treating it like an unwanted infestation and it is all he can think about. The metaphor he uses ‘fell, cruel hounds [pursuing him]’is a reference to the legend of the hunter Actaeon who was torn apart by his own hounds when turned into a stag by a goddess he had upset. This comparison makes the audience believe Orsino is truly in pain; indeed he feels like love is devouring him like hounds. Later on in Act I, Olivia describes her love for Cesario in a similar way. She calls love ‘a plague’ that she has ‘caught so quickly’ and reflects on how ‘this youth’s perfections (…) [crept in at her eyes]’. We are therefore led to believe that love is not all happy; in fact it is a form of madness, illness and suffering, especially when it is unrequited. This notion of madness is further emphasised by the title of the play ‘Twelfth Night’, referring to Epiphany which it was supposedly written for - a holiday when everything was switched around; roles were reversed, there was confusion and chaos as well as mistaken identities and disguises and everything was topsy-turvy. The love triangle between Olivia, Viola and Orsino increases the disorder and confusion of things and shows the audience love isn’t always easy or pleasant, making them cautious.
Furthermore, it can be argued that romantic love is shown as artificial, forced and untrustworthy in Twelfth Night. It could appear that Sir Andrew and Malvolio are depicted as incapable of loving and that their apparent love for Olivia is insincere. Sir Andrew is too scared and cowardly to seek love and Malvolio is too full of ‘self-love’ and unkind to feel real passion. In Act 2 scene 5, he is speaking of how he imagines married life with Olivia but his dreams are not very focused on herself but very centred on him, ‘Count Malvolio’ and how he wishes be honoured by various different people. The metonym ‘branched velvet gown’ he describes himself wearing as count shows that he concentrates more on his potential luxury than on his love for Olivia. This makes his love for Olivia seemed forced and unreal. He doesn’t really want her; he wants her title. In addition, as the audience watches Orsino be ‘devastated’ because Olivia rejects him, they could suspect he is actually enjoying himself- lying on ‘sweet beds of flowers’, listening to romantic music and trying to come up with the best poetic metaphors to describe Olivia and his passion. Therefore the audience questions the sincerity of Orsino’s emotions; are they really sincere or is he just in love with the idea of being in love? This doubt is further reinforced at the end of the play when Orsino is able to switch his affection from Olivia to Viola without a second thought; the audience suspects that he does not care about who he love as long as he can be in love.
Finally, romantic love is represented as the ultimate key to happiness. We move from the potentially tragic situation presented at the beginning, emphasised by the dark symbols of the shipwreck and the deaths of Sebastian and Olivia’s brother, to a joyous situation of harmony and life with three couples happily celebrating marriages that may lead to future births. After the topsy-turvy chaos of the rest of the play, it feels like a successful, tranquil and joyous ending for the audience. This is sharply contrasted with Malvolio and Feste’s situations at the end. Both do not marry and are excluded from the general happiness, which unites the other characters. At the end of the play, Malvolio, who didn’t really love Olivia at all, is left angry and sullen. He swears he will ‘be reveng’d on the whole pack of you!’ and storms off stage angrily. The metaphor ‘pack’ is a degrading use of zoomorphism, comparing Mariah, Feste, Sir Toby and the others to animals. This emphasises his state of anger and unhappiness. Feste sings a final melancholic song which insists of ‘the wind and rain’ of everyday life and recounts how he grew up only to discover the harshness and unkindness of life for ‘it raineth every day’. This leaves us with a dismal, unpleasant picture that seems to represent the state of those who do not find love in the end and leads us to believe Shakespeare is suggesting romantic love is the only way to be happy. Although less noticeably, Antonio is likewise exempted from the final love scheme; his hinted homosexual attraction to Sebastian, made relevant by his use of the words ‘desire’ and ‘jealousy’ to describe his motives for accompanying Sebastian into Illyria and claim that ‘his willing love’ for Sebastian will conquer ‘fear’, is never satisfied, as Sebastian marries Olivia and he is left single. It could be argued that Shakespeare is making a point that a marriage must be heterosexual to ensure a happy ending, which was a common belief in Elizabethan times. Indeed, as Feste says, ‘our play is done’ – the topsy-turvy festival has come to an end and everything must go back to a ‘normal’ and ‘proper’ state as it was in those days.
In conclusion, Shakespeare uses rich imagery and telling metonyms to paint an ideal picture of romantic love and warn the audience of its opposite – artificial and selfish love that people try to use to gain themselves advantages. Throughout the whole play, he explores different types of love – Malvolio’s insincere, selfish one for Olivia, Orsino and Antonio’s possible homosexual attractions to both Cesario and Sebastian- only to narrow down to the one love that he seems to imply will bring happiness – heterosexual love that can happen instantly. Even if it can feel like madness and bring pain and even if it is not as sincere as it could (Orsino’s suspicious love for being in love could hint at this), romantic love will lead to a joyous, harmonious situation in the end.