How is the idea of ‘love’ represented within the Shakespeare play 2 poems that you have studied?
The play ‘Twelfth Night’ was wrote between 1601 and 1602 by a famous poet and play-writer William Shakespeare. Around the time the play was written, women were known as their fathers or husbands property. This meant that they were often to sold off to men who had the highest bid, so that either they had a security net and their fathers knew they would have what they wanted OR because their fathers new they had the chance of getting some of the money, perhaps in a wedding dowry. Woman barely had any rights back in those days. Twelfth night is a celebration that certifies the end of the twelve days of Christmas. In Tudor England this was a winter festival that started on Halloween. During This celebration, the kings and peasants would swap roles; this meant that peasants would act like royalty and vice versa. This influenced Shakespeare and many other play writers at the time for men and woman to swap roles in plays. Another poet called Christina Walsh was influenced by how Shakespeare portrayed love and wrote her poem ‘A woman to her lover’. Unfortunately we don’t know much about Christina Walsh because she was only famous for that one poem. Christina lived from 1750 to approximately 1800. The twelfth night is based in a beautiful country named Illyria. It is the story of a young man and woman named Viola and Sebastian who are brother and sister. The ship they are on is wrecked from a storm and they are thrown overboard. Washed up on shore, Viola thinks her brother is dead. However he is not, he has been washed up in another part of the sea. Viola begins mourning over her brother and although she is deeply depressed she has to find work. So she cuts all of her hair off and disguises herself as a young man named Cesario and goes to work for a wealthy noble man named Duke Orsino. Here the love story begins and an awful love triangle is formed. Viola falls in love with Orsino however he doesn’t know as he thinks she is a man. Instead, he loves the most beautiful woman in Illyria; Olivia. The story is a touching story with some aspects of humour and other little plots that make the play one of Shakespeare’s most famous.
In act 2 scene 4, Viola is dressed as Cesario. Duke Orsino was declaring his love for Olivia to Viola/Cesario. In this section of the play, Shakespeare portrays love in quite a cruel way which is shown in the quote ‘sovereign cruelty’. Orsino calls Olivia this because she is not responding to how he wants her too, which shows that he finds love a frustrating and cruel feeling. ‘Sovereign’ shows that he looks at her as royalty, and that she has a lot of power; however ‘cruelty’ shows that she has her downsides, and she uses that power to undermine him and rather than letting him down softly, she says she doesn’t love him in quite a harsh way. Shakespeare also demonstrates how strong love can make someone feel. This is shown when Orsino is talking about Olivia, saying she is ‘more noble than the world’. ‘Noble’ once again shows she if of high class, and is a very powerful, wealthy woman. The fact that he says she is more noble than the world shows that he looks at her as a very precious, rare person. This shows that love is also quite a delicate feeling and that it is also quite hard to find. Viola/Cesario then says to Orsino “say that some lady, as perhaps there is, Hath for your love a great a pang of heart as you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; you tell her so; must she not then be answered?”. This shows that Viola/Cesario is hinting that there is someone else out there that loves him as much as he loves Olivia, which is herself. I think this is a part in the play where you desperately want her to tell him. I think Shakespeare is making love seem like an uncontrollable feeling as you can tell Viola/Cesario desperately wants him to know she loves him and this is why she is saying things that hint to him that there is someone else out there. Additionally, it could portray that love is overpowering. If Viola/Cesario tells Orsino she is a woman she could loose her job and get killed, but her love for him is that strong she feels like he needs to know regardless of the consequences. The quote “say that some lady, as perhaps there is, Hath for your love a great a pang of heart as you have for Olivia: you cannot love her; you tell her so; must she not then be answered?” is also very dramatic irony. The audience know exactly what Viola/Cesario is talking about however Orsino has no idea. This will make the audience feel how Viola/Cesario feels because they will desperately want him to know which also refers to the fact that love is a frustrating thing. Shakespeare is also trying to make this part of the play seem quite comic as a ‘man’ is declaring his love to another man, which will have been very funny back in those days as people were very homophobic.
