ipl-logo

Compare And Contrast Romeo And Juliet And Twelfth Night

644 Words3 Pages

What is love
“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” -Anonymous. With this being true, many of us have false pretenses of wanting to be in love due to greed or success or pleasure. Shakespeare plays with the idea of love in many plays, the most famous, Romeo And Juliet. And in Shakespeare’s, The Twelfth Night Duke Orsino is attracted with the idea of love and the passion that comes with it and Countess Olivia loves the idea of a man that has physical and emotional parts that are female.
Starting with Duke Orsino, he treats love like it’s quantitative and the more the better for him. He first talks about love in general and how he wants all the love and attention he can get. In one of his …show more content…

In the first encounter of Olivia and Cesario(Viola), Olivia changes the conversation after Cesario pours out his heart about the noble things he would do if he was Duke because she refuses to hear Cesario’s memorized words from Duke Orsino. He says strenuous things like, “Halloo your name to the reverberate hills And make the babbling gossip of the air Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest Between the elements of air and earth, But you should pity me!”(1.5.250). For Olivia to ask about a servant, is a clear sign Olivia is into him because of his expressions that appeal to women. When Cesario(Viola) is called another time to meet with Olivia, Olivia says she can tell that an intelligent one like Cesario(Viola) would be able to see how her love is being expressed through her actions - women’s love for their husbands were usually displayed buy acts of obedience and love in Elizabethan time. During the time when Sebastian and Cesario(Viola) are in the same room, Sebastian tells Olivia how that his take on love is very much the same as his sister’s(whether or not his is telling the truth) he states that, “You would have been contracted to a maid; Nor are you therein, by my life, deceived. You are betrothed both to a maid and man”(5.1.255). Olivia likes this which is another seen indication that Olivia is only in love with the sensitive characteristics of a

Show More
Related

Hamlet Vs She's The Man Essay

745 Words | 3 Pages

Olivia, the countess that Duke Orsino is in love with in Twelfth Night is Olivia, a simple girl

Read More

Setting Of Night By Elie Wiesel

249 Words | 1 Pages

Sebastian arrives at a place near Olivia’s house. There, Feste confronts him. Thinking that he’s Cesario, he tries to take Sebastian into Olivia’s household, which creates a bit of confusion between the two since Sebastian is startled by Feste’s claims that he knows him. Earlier in the play, Sir Andrew Aguecheek who has developed a grudge against Cesario, starts a fight against Sebastian, mistaking him for Cesario, to prove that he is the best suited to be Olivia’s lover. This, however, was a grave mistake.

Read More

Examples Of Orsino's Selfishness In Twelfth Night '

480 Words | 2 Pages

Farewell, and take her; but direct thy feet where thou and I henceforth may never meet.” (5.1.162,164-167) By Orsino saying to Cesario (Viola), “Or will not else thy craft so quickly grow that thine own trip shall be thine overthrow,” Orsino wishes harm on Cesario hoping that one day Cesario's tricks will destroy him. Orsino's heart is so broken and he feels so betrayed that he doesn't even question if it was in fact Cesario who married Olivia since Cesario has been working for Orsino for three

Read More

Deception And Dishonesty In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

508 Words | 3 Pages

In his play, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare has his characters participate in the practice of deception and dishonesty of others - after all, the foundation of Shakespeare’s play resides within a lie. One of the major deceptions in the play is executed by the Illyrian countess, Olivia, as she repeatedly claims to need solitude to mourn her brother’s death in order to avoid Duke Orsino and his obsession towards her. This deception contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole by adding the thematic message, deception and dishonesty is sometimes the better option when it comes to love.     From the beginning of the play, Olivia is introduced as the grieving countess that has recently lost a brother.

Read More

Why Does Olivia's Use Of Slapstick In Act 1

533 Words | 3 Pages

Slapstick comedy also brings out Sebastian and Olivia’s identities. “Cesario” placates Feste’s wordplay and desperately avoids fighting with Sir Toby whereas Sebastian jumps in ready to fight two men in the same breath. Similarly, Olivia thinks she needs to help the previously weak “Cesario” and relishes in an attempt to control such a malleable young man. Ironically, she immediately blames the violence on Sir Toby which would align with “Cesario’s” disposition but it is actually Sebastian causing trouble. Speaking of irony, a few lines before meeting Olivia, Sebastian asks “Are all the people mad” (25) before quickly devolving into the very madness he spoke against when he says “If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!”

Read More

Frankenstein Essay

1904 Words | 8 Pages

The idea of love is multifaceted and cannot be encapsulated by a single definition. It is considered to be both a universal concept and a personal experience or emotion. Love has been a topic of philosophical discourse dating back to ancient Greece. Simon May brings forth Socrates’ theory of what he thought love was in his book Love a History (2011) stating that love is “What we lack,” and “I [Socrates] find beautiful or good in what I lack” (46). Socrates’ definition of love can be seen as quite simple for something as complex as “love”, that: love is a desire for what we yet don't possess.

Read More

The Dying Masterpiece Analysis

1095 Words | 5 Pages

The Dying Masterpiece “Fool as de woman!” Old Behrman cursed as he put on his stained jacket. The room was dark. Empty bottles lay scattered across the floor as well as perched upon every drawer and cupboard.

Read More

Comparing Twelfth Night And Hamlet By William Shakespeare

419 Words | 2 Pages

William Shakespeare wrote many plays in his time, many of which deal with important and still relevant themes in life, either the comedic side or the tragic side. The plays Twelfth Night and Hamlet are both surrounded by uncertainty, but differ in their central themes and endings. In both plays, the characters are frequently confused and uncertain, but this stems from different places. In Twelfth Night, the confusion surrounds the genders of the characters, as a girl is dressed as her twin brother.

Read More

Homosexuality In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

1112 Words | 5 Pages

The question of why Olivia, after dramatically declaring her affections for Cesario, would so quickly jump to Sebastian after finding Viola’s true identity, is likely answered by the societal norms of the Elizabethan era. Cesario and Viola are two halves of one whole; by loving Cesario, Olivia loves Viola too. Upon meeting “him,” Olivia says “Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions and spirit/ Do give thee five-fold blazon” (1.5.297-298). She is attracted not just to Cesario’s mannerisms, but to Viola’s beauty, which shines through her male bravado. The “actions and spirit” which Olivia refers to are Viola’s ability to converse with Olivia woman-to-woman, unbeknownst to the countess.

Read More

Romeo And Juliet And Twelfth Night Comparison

795 Words | 4 Pages

In the story it shows a love triangle between Orsino, Cesario (Viola), and Olivia. Cesario falls in love with Orsino, Viola is in love with Cesario, and Orsino is still in love with Olivia. The characters in the story all show happiness and joy throughout because it’s a story that ends in love unlike Romeo and Juliet where it ends in a tragedy. As said in Twelfth Night, “Its central plot concerns a love triangle between the Illyrian nobleman Orsino, his beloved but unattainable Olivia, and the shipwrecked Viola.” (Lee

Read More

Twelfth Night Olivia's Suffering

809 Words | 4 Pages

Olivia cannot return the Duke’s love, or anyone’s for that matter, due to the recent loss of her brother and her seven year promise of . After the Duke sends Cesario to deliver his declaration of love, Olivia states, “Even so quickly may one catch the plague?" (I, v, 301) Olivia, already suffering from her mourning, suffers further do to this love, which is described as a ‘plague’. Infected by this love, Olivia sends Malvolio to deliver a ring to Cesario. Also, due to the disguise of Viola, she later confuses Sebastian for Cesario, thus giving him a pearl.

Read More

Love At First Love In Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

958 Words | 4 Pages

Despite popular opinion, love at first sight does not exist. The idea of “love” is widely misinterpreted as a mere attraction between two individuals. However, many do not understand that love goes much further than this, and what follows is a common misconception between love and lust. Shakespeare in his 17th century play Twelfth Night delves deeper into this idea of love. He presents the character Duke Orsino who appear to be infatuated and love-sick for the Countess Olivia, a woman with which he knows little about.

Read More

Compare And Contrast Romeo And Juliet

1596 Words | 7 Pages

Romeo and Juliet is a play written by William Shakespeare, originally published in 1597. It is a tragedy of two star-crossed lovers, who fall in love with each other despite their families hate. The play is taught in many schools and it is often coupled with a movie adaption of the play. There have been many movie adaptations of Romeo and Juliet done and yet there are only a few out of the five I have watched that I would recommend. The top one that I would recommend is the 1968 version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

Read More

Relationships In Twelfth Night

1209 Words | 5 Pages

The first instance which supports the notion that a lapse of communication is responsible for the unsuccessful nature of heterosexual relationships is the case of Duke Orsino and Countess Olivia’s relationship. Both start the play preoccupied with their own concerns, Orsino is worried about finding love, specifically with Olivia, meanwhile she is busy mourning the death of her brother by refusing to marry anyone for seven years. However, it is Orsino’s obsession with seeking love and how he goes about pursuing Olivia that best exemplifies the problematic nature of a male and female’s relationship. Orsino opened the play by saying of love, “Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, / The appetite may sicken and so die” (1.1.1-3), essentially saying that he so badly craves the feeling being in love gives him, that he would like in so great a quantity that it would end his life.

Read More

Viola's Disguise In Twelfth Night

929 Words | 4 Pages

As he states that all lovers are, “Unstaid and skittish in all motions else / Save in the constant image of the creature / That is beloved.” (2.4, 20-22). This demonstrates Orsino’s misunderstanding of the concept of love, as it seems that true love means fickle and erratic according to his definition. Furthermore, in disguise as Cesario, Viola also unintentionally exposes the passionate nature beneath the courtly manner and mourning veil of the “virtuous maid” (1.2, 32), as she causes Olivia to fall in desperate love with Cesario.

Read More

More about Compare And Contrast Romeo And Juliet And Twelfth Night

Related Topics

Open Document