From then on the language goes from prose to poetry: “have you any commission from your lord to negotiate with my face” to “make me a willow cabin at your gate, and call upon my soul within; write lonely cantons of condemned love”. This happens as the characters grow more accustomed to each other, Olivia using poetic language to woo Viola/Cesario. Olivia relishes Viola/Cesario’s sincerity and shows more interest in Viola/Cesario and her personality. Viola/Cesario begins to mock courtly love and the very message she is conveying to Olivia. Shakespeare has obviously used Viola/Cesario in this scene to question courtly love and make the reader think about what the point of it all is. An example of Viola/Cesario’s thoughts on love “If I did love you in my master’s flame, with such a suff’ring, such a deadly life, in your denial I would find no sense; I would not understand it”. She questions the suffering of courtly love but also speaks her own thoughts saying: Why does Orsino keep chasing Olivia? In these lines Viola really comes back to her real role as a woman. This part also creates dramatic irony as the audience don’t know that she is in love with Orsino. Shakespeare presents a woman’s view on love in a highly poetic way which really accentuates their meaning and the message he is trying to get across.
From here on Olivia tries to question Viola/Cesario and get better acquainted but Viola/Cesario swiftly re-assumes her courtly lover role and leaves Olivia, her last words being “Farewell, fair cruelty”. This suggests that she still thinks that Olivia is playing the courtly lover role. Olivia then makes a soliloquy where she talks about how she fears she is falling in love with Viola/Cesario “Even so quickly may one catch the plague, methinks I feel this youth’s perfections, with an invisible and subtle stealth”. So it appears that Shakespeare is now saying that courtly love is not the right way to woo a women (Orsino’s failure) and that the best way is to be yourself and to show your emotions. In the next few lines Olivia pretends that Viola/Cesario has left a ring behind and tells Malvolio to give him back his ring “Run after that some peevish messenger, the county’s man. He left this ring behind him”. But her real motive for doing this is that she has fallen in love with Viola/Cesario and wants to give her a ring as a sign of her love. She has now completely reversed in her role and become the courtly lover, trying to woo Viola/Cesario. Shakespeare uses this to ridicule courtly love and show that women can have desires too. He is saying that love should not follow a formula such as that of courtly love and that both sexes should have equal roles in love.
Throughout Act 2 Scene 4 Shakespeare uses Orsino to show how hopeless and depressed a courtly lover is. He demonstrates how Orsino has grown obsessed with the morals of courtly love and how he has grown to love the idea of love more than love itself. The first example of Orsino’s obsession with courtly love is when he says to Viola/Cesario “For such as I am, all true loves, unstaid and skittish in all motions else, save in the constant image of the creature that is beloved”. In this passage Shakespeare shows how proud and narcissistic Orsino has become. He mocks the fact that Orsino has become so fixated on the suffering of love that he deludes himself into thinking that he is a model lover. Humour is also created here as the audience marvels at Orsino’s delusions of grandeur.
The scene then continues as Orsino starts to talk to Viola/Cesario and tell her his theories on love. The first time we see this is when Viola tells Orsino about her perfect woman:
“Orsino – What kind of woman is’t?
Viola/Cesario – Of your complexion
Orsino – She is not worth thee then. What years, I’faith
Viola/Cesario – About your years, my lord
Orsino – Too old, by heaven! Let still the women take an elder than herself”.
But although Orsino thinks that she is describing a women, she is actually describing a man, and that man is Orsino. This is one of the first times that the audience find out about Viola’s love towards Orsino. Shakespeare uses this to create dramatic irony as only the audience (and the sea captain) know that Viola/Cesario is actually a women. Orsino says that Viola “speaks masterfully” this helps Viola/Cesario to prove that women have the same capacity for love as men. Shakespeare also uses these characters to show that it doesn’t matter what age people are as long as they love each other. This is exemplified in Shakespeare’s own life as Shakespeare married when he was nineteen to a women seven and a half years his senior. On another level he could be speaking from experience after perhaps having problems with his own marriage.
Orsino’s language now turns very poetic as he emphasises his feelings on love in accordance with the feelings of a courtly lover; self-centred, extravagant and pained:
“Then let thy love be younger than thyself, or thy affection cannot hold the bent, for women are as roses, whose fair flower, being once displayed, doth fall every hour”. This says that women get less beautiful as they get older and creates further humour in the narrow-minded attitudes Orsino has to men and women. Shakespeare now uses the dramatic device of a song to further mock courtly love.
The song is about a melancholy lover who dies for love and wants to be forgotten. Feste uses the song to mock Orsino’s melancholy. At first Feste describes the despair of a courtly lover “I am slain by a fair cruel maid” to sympathise with Orsino’s state but then goes on to say: “ my part of death no one true did share it. Not a flower sweet”. Feste mocks Orsino’s idea that he is a model lover and tells Orsino that he has no friends. Throughout the song Feste uses very poetic language and this is how he manages to make fun of Orsino. He uses the theme of death “black coffin”, “poor corpse” to paint a bad picture of a courtly lover.
After the song Feste talks about Orsino’s mood swings:
“Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy a doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal”.
Taffeta is a silk that changes colour and opal is a jewel that seems to change colour.
Both these things refer to Orsino’s constant mood swings. Feste is a very important character utilised by Shakespeare to openly ridicule Orsino. He mocks how Orsino conforms slavishly to the guidelines of courtly love and makes fun of his melancholy.
From here on a conversation between Orsino and Viola/Cesario ensues. Orsino tells Viola/Cesario about his views on women and Viola/Cesario comes out of her male role to defend them. Viola/Cesario first asks Orsino what he would do if a women loved him as he loved Olivia “Say that some lady, as perhaps there is, Hath for your love as great a pang of heart as you have for Olivia”
Shakespeare uses this to show Viola/Cesario’s love towards Orsino. Orsino’s answer to this is dismissive. He is so wrapped up in the ideals of courtly love that he tells Olivia that he can’t compare the love between men and women “make no compare between that love a women can bear me” and that women cannot love as much as men “no woman’s heart so big, to hold so much”. He also says “but mine is all as hungry as the sea”. This is a metaphor as the sea is so vast that it must hypothetically be very hungry. All three of these sayings correspond perfectly with the idea of courtly love and further show how stereotyped Orsino is (he is saying that no women can love as much as him).
Shakespeare now uses Viola/Cesario to show a woman’s point of view on love. Viola/Cesario tells a story about her love towards Orsino, but Orsino does not know this “My father had a daughter loved a man” and “she never told her lover, but let concealment like a worm i’th’bud feed on her damask cheek”. This is the best example of dramatic irony so far, Orsino is oblivious of the fact that Viola is a woman and that she is talking about herself. Shakespeare uses this well to create tension among the audience.
Shakespeare also managed to use Viola/Cesario’s remarks to befittingly end the scene. In a way Viola has now become a courtly lover and this statement is employed by Shakespeare to show how different and diverse love can be.
This echoes back on the whole play as well as this section. The general message that Shakespeare is trying to convey throughout is that there are no rules in love. He is saying that you should love someone for their personality and not for their wealth, land or power. He has managed to do this in a number of ways. Mainly the idea and mocking of courtly love and also the ideas placed by Viola/Cesario of how women can love too. Different characters are used well by Shakespeare and this is how he manages to convey his ideas on love so well. The role-changing also mocks the falseness of courtly love and it appears that Shakespeare is saying that both partners should be treated equally in love.
