In Act 2, Scene 4, Feste, at Orsino's will, sings a song that associates love with suffering and death and is therefore, in the tradition of courtly love (and Orsino sees himself as a courtly lover) and matches Orsino's constantly miserable mood. It revolves around the idea of love being so powerful it will kill you, lovers are to be pitied, and the women are "cruel", for making the men suffer in love with them, which is exactly how Orsino feels. Feste's song also includes sibilance like "sad cypress", which sounds soft and pretty. Feste also uses hyperbole in his song, "A thousand thousand sighs", which is what Orsino wants to hear and also shows that a Feste can use it. The fools in Shakespeare's stories contradict their title, and are often the most intelligent characters with the most insight on the situation. They are clearly smart with a flair for words, who put on an act of folly to entertain their masters or mistresses. They are also in the strange position of being able to say whatever they want to their lord or lady, while remaining totally dependent on them for their living, as Feste does with Orsino. "Now, the melancholy god protect thee". Feste is mocking Orsino for being so gloomy, all the while making it sound like he is looking out for him. He then tells him that the "tailor make they doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal!", which sounds nice enough, even complimentary, telling someone their mind is an opal. However, Feste's meaning is hidden in the words, He links Orsino with a cloth and precious stone, which are both known for changing their color in different lights, implying that Orsino himself is as changeable in his love life. This is Feste speaking his mind and telling his master what he really thinks and either Orsino realizes what he's saying but Feste doesn't get in trouble for it because he hasn’t really insulted him, or because he says it so good-naturedly, or Orsino, with all his high-class and fancy education isn’t as intelligent as the fool who works for him. We already know that Feste is wiser than Orsino simply because of the comments he made, which are actually true, because although Orsino claims that he is a true lover who never changes his mind about the person he loves, at the end, after all his propaganda about his love for Olivia, he will change his mind and fall in love with Viola in about 10 seconds. At the beginning of the scene , when Orsino is talking with Cesario about love he actually tells him that men's "fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women's are", saying that men's desires change more. Later in the scene, he says that "There is no woman's sides can bide the beating of so string a passion As doth give my heart; no woman's heart So big, to hold so much; they lack retention." Here he is saying that women can't love as much or as strongly as men. "No motion of the liver", Elizabethans believed that the liver was the source of passion. Orsino claims that women's' love is shallower than men's. In a way he is contradicting himself with his two views, at the beginning and at the end of the scene, saying how men aren’t stable and the direction of their passion changes and then how men love more than woman and with more passion. At first I thought he was contradicting himself then I thought that perhaps he isn’t because what he is talking about, what he thinks is love, is really infatuation, and that’s passionate and it changes, while love is stable. I also think that Orsino's obsession with Olivia has a lot to do with the way she looks. In Act 1, Scene 1 he talks about how beautiful she is, while never really mentioning her personality and in Act 2, Scene 4 he says that "women are as roses whose fair flower, Being once displayed, doth fall that very hour". He talks about women as if they are an exhibitions of roses, that all they are good for is being stared at, put on display, then they cant be used again because they are no longer pretty. This is really sexist and insulting to women and implies that all Orsino case about, despite his ranting and raving about love, is physical beauty. ((((Which ironically is what Toby cares about but Toby makes it clear and Orsino sugar coats it)))) There are two parts of Act 2, Scene 4 about Orsino, which could be displayed in different lights. The first is when Cesario says "But what if she cannot love you, sir?" referring to Olivia and Orsino replies with "I cannot be so answered". The way Orsino says this depends on the way the actor playing him wants to portray him. He could say it angrily, exuding arrogance, because he thinks that no one could answer him like that, no one could refuse him. Or he could say it with stress on the "I", again showing his arrogance, but says it in a lower voice and calmly and very knowingly as if he knows he is so amazing that Olivia couldn’t possibly turn away from him. Or, the actor could choose to show a more vulnerable, nice, not so bigheaded side of Orsino and say it sounding slightly confused and worried, like 'Oh my god what if she does reject me". Then there's the part where Cesario is telling him about her "sister" who never told her love and Orsino asks him "But died thy sister of her love my boy?". This could be interpreted in two ways. The actor can either say this as if he was challenging him, like his sister couldn't possibly have so much love that she would die of it, like he could or he could be genuinely concerned and interested in what happened to her.
In Act 1, Scene 3 Sir Toby and Maria speak in prose, which Shakespeare uses to show that they are lower class characters, which isn’t completely true because technically Sir Toby is of a higher class. This way of speech is in contrast to Orsino's poetic language. Toby uses word play just like Orsino did and it shows that being higher class doesn't define how smart you are (just like Sir Andrew who is of a higher class than Toby and is probably the stupidest character in the play). Toby says "Confine! I'll confine myself no finer than I am" to mean the way you dress yourself, in response to Maria using the word confine to mean that he should behave himself. He also uses personification, proving again he isn’t the idiot we all expect him to be. "...an they be not, let them hang themselves in their own straps" he says about his boots but referring to them as people who can just go to hell if they don’t approve of what he is doing. Maria tries to warn Toby about his bad behavior because she seems to care about him. "That quaffing and drinking will undo you". This is different to Orsino's 'care' for Olivia, which actually seems non-existent or is aimed at himself. Sir Andrew who is a high class character, more so than Toby and has (no one mentioned 'makes') "three thousand ducats a year" by Toby's knowledge is proof of my previous point that the class of a character did not decide his intelligence. When Toby introduces Maria, he tells Andrew to 'accost' her and Andrew mistakes the verb for her name and even when Maria corrects him and tells him her name, he still thinks accost is her last name. Toby then spells it out for him, "You mistake, knight; "accost is front her, board her, woo her, assail her" which are all words to describe rather violent approaches to sex. This shows that when Toby uses what Mr. Pacey think is wordplay and I don’t find clear how it is in this situation, he often uses it vulgarly. This can be compared to Orsino's word play, where he plays on the word "hart", changing it from being about hunting a deer to hunting his heart, showing his idealistic, sentimental love. Toby again uses wordplay and once again it reflects his dirty mind. He uses a type of word play called 'double entendre', a word or phrase which has 2 meaning one of which is dirty. He says "would thou might'st never draw thy sword again!" to Andrew, without meaning it literally. This shows Toby's interest in physical aspects in contrast to Orsino's apparent interest in emotional stuff. Maria proves that she is also capable or using wordplay when she outsmarts Sir Andrew. Andrew says, "Fair lady, do you think you have fools in hand?" and she tells him "Sir, I have you not by the hand", easily implying that Andrew is a fool without him realizing it. This reinforces the idea that the lower class characters can be just as, if not more intelligent than the higher class ones. It also shows that women can be smarter than men. I think that underneath it all, Toby and Orsino are a bit more alike than we see them to be. Toby however is open and honest about the way he feels, while Orsino sugarcoats it. Orsino, when talking about Olivia, showed us that he didn’t seem to care very much about her, but talked about her beauty a lot and then talked in general about women's beauty and its importance, which means her physical attraction was a large part of the reason he was so infatuated with her, especially as he barely knew her. But Orsino spoke poetically about her beauty, covering up that he was obviously thinking about her physical aspects while Toby openly proclaims whatever sexual thoughts he's having.
"She'll none o' the count; she'll not match above her degree, neither in estate, years, nor wit" Sir Toby says to Andrew in attempt to get him to stay and keep pursuing Olivia. He says that Olivia won't marry Orsino because he is of a higher class than she is. We know that this isn’t the reason she doesn't want Orsino but we don’t know whether it could be, if she did like him. If she had married Orsino she would have climbed higher on the social, ladder like many characters in the play did, or wanted to do. Malvolio was obviously one of those characters. Although he never actually got to rise socially, he was tricked into believing he would and so, in that state of mind, he let himself imagine what it would be like to be of a higher class. When he finds the letter that hints that Olivia loves him, he isn’t happy because he loves or likes her too or even because a beautiful woman loves him, but merely because he thinks that if he marries her he can gain power, status and money, "I frown the while, and perchance wind up my watch, or play with my – some rich jewel. Toby approaches, and curtsies to me, -". During the middle ages, power and wealth had been exclusively in the hands or a minority of people and was handed down from generation to generation within the same family. The increase of trade saw the rise of the middle classes, a new group who were acquiring wealth through their own skill, energy and enterprise. Feste and Maria can be classified into this new group. Maria's friendship with Toby, some critics believe, could be motivated by a desire to elevate socially. She may wish to marry Toby to better her own position rather than for love and she knows he is one of the very few upper class men who would marry a servant, smart as she may be. She matches him in wordplay to show that she is his equal and this was not considered correct behavior from a servant. She can be seen representative of the growing middle class.
In conclusion I think all the views of love in this story have reality at the heart of them but are overblown to be interesting to the audience. I think probably Feste and Maria have the best attitudes to love. Maria really cares about Toby but she can also really talk to him like a normal person and joke and have fun with him. Feste is realistic and I really like that because all the other characters are all caught up in their own imaginary world and he has the chance to actually see what love is or isn’t as a spectator without any emotions to get in the way and this is what gives people the most realistic view, when you are not involved. The two people with the worst attitudes towards love would have to be Orsino and Malvolio, although I'm not sure that Malvolio counts because he didn’t even pretend to love Olivia and he certainly never preached about loving her, never said a word. Orsino doesn't really love Olivia, he only loves the idea of her, including her physical beauty and the thing that really annoys me is that he sugarcoats it with 'love' and its also annoying how pathetic and miserable he is all the time because of his infatuation with Olivia. Another point that proves his bad attitude to love is that after all this time with him thinking he was madly in love with Olivia and talking about he could never love anyone else, he can just immediately change and love another person in an average of about 20 seconds. In total it was enlightening to see how many ways you can view love and how it changes who you thought the person was.
"Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die". Orsino (still believing that music will feed his love) wants so much of it that it will ruin his appetite for llove so he wont have to go thorhg all the pain of loving Oliva, I think. I also belive thsat someone in love wont want it to go away
I think that he is listening to music and saying this about it because it's his replacement for the love Olivia should be giving him. He is giving her so much of what he believes is love and he isn't getting anything back from her so he sees himself as starved of love, and when you are so starved of something, you want a lot of it and since he's not going to be getting her love anytime soon, he's substituted it with music and has said that he wants "excess of it, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken,". I think he's got everything money can buy and he now just wants true love and he isn’t receiving it and he himself doesn't really feel it, its just a shallow emotion, which he convinces himself is love. It's like chocolate. With really rich chocolate with a lot of taste, you only have to have like one piece or bar or whatever, and that’s true love. Other chocolate that tastes really good, but doesn't have so much taste that one bite is enough, you have to keep having and having and that’s Orsiino;s infatuation with oLoivia. Orsiono then talks directly to "the sprit love" he has to feel misery to feel anything prove sits not love. He wasnts so much of it fed so it dies.
