How does Shakespeare use the theme of love to create a comedy?

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How does Shakespeare use the theme of love

to create a comedy?

“Twelfth Night” is a romantic comedy with true love at its heart. The play does have occasional dark undertones but generally the genuine love and the misunderstanding make it a comic play. It was written originally for the Twelfth Night celebrations after Christmas in 1602. These celebrations were light hearted and a time for revelry. It was sometimes known as the “Feast of Fools” and normal behaviour and sensible acts were suspended at this time. Authority was turned up side down. In most universities, private houses and the law schools, a Lord of Misrule was elected. Usually a servant became Master of the Household for a short period of time. He organised dances, masques and make-believe activities. Everything was allowed; pranks, deception, etc., ruled this period between 25th December and 6th January. Afterwards, everything goes back to normal and the original hierarchy is once more obeyed.

Even though comedy is a large part of the play, love is most definitely the main theme. There are love triangles, love based on disguise and true love al involved in the lives of the characters. The play transforms one type of love for another, for example, selfish self-love is transformed to genuine love. This aspect shows that true love wins through in the end. Shakespeare uses all of the different types of love to create comedy towards the audience. For example, the self-love is so masochistic that the audience looks on with humour with the over-exaggeration. Unrequited love also makes quite a big romantic impact because the character is seen making a fool of themselves. Twelfth Night is a mixture of all emotions; an audience will laugh, cry and fume at the characters that Shakespeare creates.

There are three characters at the heart of the play involved in a love triangle. Orsino is the first that we are introduced to. Shakespeare represents Orsino as a parody of the romantic lover, in love with the idea of love. He is comic at times because of his obsession and the exaggerated language he uses to talk about love:

Quote: Act 1, Scene 1

“If music be the food of love, play on

Give me the excess of it, that surfeiting

The appetite may sicken and so die”

This quotation shows how melodramatic Shakespeare makes Orsino. It is so exaggerated that the audience would find him comical as he is portrayed as thinking that no other experience is as good as his intense feeling for love. He is obsessed by Olivia and is comical because of his obsessive nature. He also frequently seems quite fickle in his feelings which adds to his comic nature:

Quote: Act 1, Scene 1

“Enough; no more.

‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before”

This quotation is an example of how Orsino changes his feelings in an instant.

Later Orsino is talking to Viola/Cesario about men and women in love. He claims to be the model lover, talking about his love for Olivia:

Quote: Act 2, Scene 4

“For such as I am, all true loves are

Unstaid and skittish in all motions else”

His lines are made particularly funny and he seems unperceptive because the audience is aware that Cesario is of course a woman and that despite what Orsino says about women having less capacity for love than men, Viola/Cesario in fact loves him a lot and much more constantly than he loves Olivia. This is a good example of dramatic irony. Shakespeare satirises Orsino’s exaggerated obsessive form of love.

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The second character involved in the love triangle is Olivia. Orsino and Olivia are quite similar in a number of ways but their main similarity is in their characters. They both provide comedy in the play because of their obsessive love and their fickleness. Examples of this for Olivia are her obsessive love for her dead brother and Cesario and how she changes from seven years mourning to loving Cesario and then changing from Cesario to Sebastian. A quotation for her obsessive nature is:

Quote: Act 3, Scene 1

“Have you not set mine honour at ...

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