Twelfth Night, the themes of mistaken identities, disguise, true love and self-indulging love.

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Characters and events are important factors in plays as their interactions throughout the plot develop the central ideas or themes that the author wishes to communicate to the audience. Some common themes are investigations into common human experiences that may involve complex moral issues or questions the integrity of relationships. A play which uses characters and events to explore such important themes is Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. The dominant themes Shakespeare introduces in Twelfth Night are love and deception. Love and deception are critical in that they embody the values for humans in today's society since love comforts humans and bring them together while deception is the betrayal of truth and honesty which causes separation and anguish. Shakespeare uses these themes in order to demonstrate a rich variety of relationships.

Shakespeare presents love throughout the play to provide the audience with his perspective on love as it exists in human society including self-love, selfless love and true love. Shakespeare illustrates the different aspects of love throughout the play by the language used including soliloquies, metaphors, motifs and symbols.

Self-love is one's self indulgence disguised as love in order to fulfill or satisfy one's egotism. In Twelfth Night, self-love is represented by the characters of Olivia, Orsino and Malvolio. Olivia embodies self-love which is clearly depicted in the scene where she mourns for her dead brother and she locks herself in her own world, refusing to speak to any guests until Viola comes along to deliver Orsino's message of love. After delivering her message, Olivia approaches Viola by sending her a diamond ring (Act I Scene V). This indicates the Olivia was indulging herself in the thought of love for her brother since she completely forgets about him at the first appearance of Viola disguised as Cesario. Also, in this scene, two motifs are shown in delivering messages - Viola and the diamond ring. They both represent the message of love by the two characters Olivia and Orsino. Likewise, Orsino indulges in only the thought of love which leads him to suffer in the play as he does not communicate or have interest in the outside world and only a love obsession on Olivia: 'If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, The appetite may so sicken and so die,' . This is both an imagery and metaphor as he refers music as the food of love and it can be seen that he is self-indulging in the idea of love since he imagines being fulfilled with the idea of love but becomes sick of it; that is, love as a form of gluttony. Malvolio, on the other hand, represents a different kind of self-love. Although Malvolio dresses in crossed garters and yellow stockings for Olivia, he only does it for his fortune and status (Act III Scene IV). This is demonstrated to the audience in his soliloquy, 'I will be proud, I will read politic authors, I will baffle Sir Toby, I will wash off gross acquaintance, I will be point-device the very man. I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me.'

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By contrast, true love is a strong affection that one has for another which is constant, while selfless love is when one truly loves another but does not show it and has the courage to sacrifice for their love. The characters Viola and Antonio express true and selfless love in Twelfth Night. In the love triangle between Viola, Orsino and Olivia, Viola is the only character who is truly in love. She loves Orsino and wants to send the message across to him but realises she has to suffer for the consequences of being in disguise as a man. ...

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