Love in Twelfth Night

Love in twelfth night

In the play twelfth night, Shakespeare covered three types of love : Lust, true love and brotherly love. Love is one of the most confusing and most misunderstood emotions that we as humans posses. Love is an extremely diverse emotion which is why it was used as the main topic in twelfth night.

Lust, which is probably one of the most confusing types of love was an apparent subject in twelfth night.There are many reasons why one would lust, one could be because you are attracted to a specific quality of a person or could maybe only like there looks or even just thing like there charisma. Shakespeare showed lust between Orsino and Olivia. Even though Orsino had not met or even seen Olivia, he was still madly in love with her. Lust is defined as an intense but temporary wanting of a persons attention or love. Orsino tried to capture the heart of Olivia through out the play, and lusted for her because he was attracted by her grieving for her family. It was thought by Orsino that She would have an intense love for him if she loved her family so much. As the play moves forward, Orsino actually meets Olivia but he loses his lust for her, and instead loves Viola ( formerly Cesario). Shakespeare also used lust between Malvolio and Olivia. Malvolio thought that Olivia had fallen in love with him (as the reader knows this was a joke being played on Malvolio). This grew a larger ego bubble on Malvolio. He thought that she truly wanted his love, and thusly his ego led him to believe that he truly did love her due to the fact that he was so full of himself. Once again Malvolio finds out in the end that it was a joke. Malvolio?s conceitedness was broken and then he sees that he did not truly love Olivia, but was only flattered that he had been loved by someone so beautiful and young.

True love is extremely different then lust, and was also present through out the play. True love is obviously one of the strongest forms of love and is an extremely powerful emotion that one would perhaps do many things for. Shakespeare showed various forms of true love in twelfth night especially through Viola (Cesario) and Orsino. Even though Orsino did not know it, Olivia was falling in love with him. She saw qualities in him that she appreciated and liked. Unlike lust, true love is usually developed, and grows stronger as you get to know and understand the person better. In this case, Viola only began to like Orsino after she had gotten to know him. It grew more and more and finally in the end when her true identity was revealed she married him. Another example of true love was with Sir. Toby and Maria. When you are in love you would always try to do things for the best interest?s for that person, and would try to protect them from harm. Throughout the play there are numerous times where Maria tries to warn and protect Sir Toby from Malvolio and Olivia, so that he would not get in trouble. If you care for someone that much to keep them out of harms way, then that is a strong sing of true love. True love was also present when you will forgive or forget an occurrence because of your felling for that person. For example when the true identity of Sebastian and Viola was revealed Olivia was willing to forget and move on from the lies and deceit because she grew to love Sebastian.
The last type of love shown in twelfth night was brotherly love ( also known as friendly love). When Viola became shipwrecked the only concern that she had was if her brother were still alive. When you have developed a non-platonic relationship with someone you care about, you still have an intense feeling for there safety, attention and love. At first Viola did not care about the well being of herself but right away was looking for a way to try and find and help her brother. When you are related to someone by blood you have usually grown up and have learned to have each other to depend on and thusly, you love them.