ENGL100A Lecture Notes - Sir Thopas, Tangled, Malvolio
Document Summary
Twelfth night is a romantic comedy, and romantic love is the play"s main focus. Despite the fact that the play offers a happy ending, in which the various lovers find one another and achieve wedded bliss, Many of the characters seem to view love as a kind of curse, a feeling that attacks its victims suddenly and disruptively. Various characters claim to suffer painfully from being in love, or, rather, from the pangs of unrequited love. At one point, orsino depicts love dolefully as an appetite that he wants to satisfy and cannot (i. i. 1 3); at another point, he calls his desires fell and cruel hounds (i. i. 21). Olivia more bluntly describes love as a plague from which she suffers terribly (i. v. 265). These metaphors contain an element of violence, further painting the love- struck as victims of some random force in the universe. Even the less melodramatic viola sighs unhappily that my state is desperate for my master"s love (ii. ii. 35).