The first of these is known as ‘Courtly love’. Women were worshipped from afar and men longed to be with these women with a burning desire. They were ‘put on a pedestal’ and adored from distance as unattainable goddesses. Only by long devotion, many trials and much suffering, could a man win his ideal women, the ‘fair cruel main’ of literature. This love is obviously sexless and idealised. In veracity, it quite often occurred that men were in love with the idea of being in love, instead of actually loving someone. These men would surround themselves with the trappings of love; flowers, music, symbols of love (hearts) and much more. This would make them believe that they were in love when actually they just loved the idea of it. One such a man is Orsino in the play Twelfth Night.
The second type of love is called ‘Romantic love’. This is where someone surrounds themselves with the trappings of love. They constantly sigh and dream of their loved one, with all the trappings encouraging the longing for their love. This involved the notion of ‘love at first sight’, and would consume someone’s life with love and ideas of romance. This love was also idealised and sexless but meeting did happen, and often the result was marriage for life.
With these two forms of love combined, it produced what is called ‘the melancholy lover’. This man would suffer for his love. He would surround himself totally by love and ideas of love, the trappings and all the works. He would sign and moan, longing for his unattainable goddess whom’s beauty won him over at first sight and has ever more consumed his life. The ‘melancholy lover’ never attained the one he loved, as she was worshipped from afar and only appeared in his dreams. Also with the trappings of love at his side, the ‘melancholy lover’ was helpless and suffered for eternity, as his ‘prize’ could never be won. Orsino opens the play of Twelfth Night, and is the prime example of a ‘melancholy lover’.
Orsino is the prime example of the melancholy lover, and is Shakespeare’s example of Elizabethan love. He does not know it, but Orsino is in love with the idea of being in love itself, he doesn’t actually love Olivia like he claims to. The love he senses for Olivia is metaphorically referred to as an ‘appetite’ and music as its ‘food’. He feels music stimulates his love for Olivia, and it ‘feeds’ his emotions and satisfies his ‘hunger’ for love. Orsino’s love is not realistic, and he worships Olivia from a vast distance, as the courtly love he holds shines through. She is merely an object, not real but there to fuel his emotions, and representing the idealised object of his love. The romantic love fuels the courtly love, as flowers and music make it easier for him to just sit down and love her from a distance. Although he claims to love her, he does nothing himself to win her over, and instead dispatches viola (Cesario) to woo Olivia on his behalf. This wooing by proxy enabled Orsino to carry out his courtly love, but attempt romantic love by sending someone on his behalf as a grand passionate gesture. ‘That, notwithstanding thy capacity, receiveth as the sea’. Orsino feels his capacity to love is as big as the sea. Orsino deliberately misinterprets his servant’s request to ‘hunt the hart’, and is likening his love to a deer hunt; no matter what he does, love is chasing him. He does this a lot, changing words and sentences to further coddle in thoughts of Olivia. He desires only ‘love thoughts’ but not love itself. He makes himself ‘canopied with bowers’ so to feel emotional attachment to love and Olivia. He describes his love as ‘cruel hounds’ and makes himself believe that love is dominating him, when it is only his mind that has been addicted to the idea of love.
Olivia sees through Orsino’s fake love for her and ‘brushes him off her shoulder’. She sees his love as a ‘heresy’ as he sends a messenger to court on his behalf, and that it is wrong to do so. She feels he is ‘betraying’ himself, as he has only love for ideas of love, and is tricking himself that he loves her. Although Olivia tries in vain to stop Orsino trying to woo her, Orsino believes she cannot say no to him. He sees himself as love incarnate and repudiates to accept rejection. So instead of moving onto someone else, he persists in still sending messengers and desperately trying to entice her and make her fall for him. This in return makes Olivia put up with him less, and if it weren’t for her fancying Cesario (Orsino’s messenger), she would have dismissed him long ago. Whatever Orsino says or does, it cannot be hidden that he is in fact not in love with Olivia; he’s just in metaphorical love with love itself.