Unrequited Love In Twelfth Night

Must be Unrequited Love on the Brain Unrequited love -- the most tragic form of love, and a feeling that William Shakespeare uses to create humor, tension, and manipulate certain characters in his play Twelfth Night. William Shakespeare uses this type of love as the plot of his comedy Twelfth Night in order to create many emotions within his characters including jealousy and envy which leads them to nearly ruin relationships with the people they adore. In Twelfth Night, a lady named Viola washes upon the shores of the island Illyria after a boat crash and believes her brother to be dead. To make a living, Viola dresses up as a man named Cesario, so she can work for Duke Orsino, who governs Illyria. Meanwhile, Orsino is madly in …show more content…
In Act V, Scene I, Shakespeare uses different figures of speech in order to help us visualize and further comprehend Orsino’s feelings. In this soliloquy Orsino states, “I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I so love/ To spite a raven’s heart within a dove” (V.i. 133 - 134). In this metaphor, Orsino compares Cesario to a lamb because they are precious and seem innocent and dear to him. He also compares Olivia to a dove with a raven’s heart because she has a cruel heart, yet he is head over heels for her because of her beauty and complexion. This metaphor shows that Orsino feels so deceived that he threatens to sacrifice his most loyal servant in order to have Olivia feel an equal if not a more extreme amount of pain that he feels. This metaphor clearly demonstrates how powerful and destructive jealousy, envy, and even love can be because it can drive characters to be monstrous and phycotic. Another figure of speech was, “Like to the Egyptian thief at point of death, / Kill what I love?” (V. i. 119 - 120) This simile, along with the previous metaphor shows the audience a hostile tone that we have not seen from Orsino so far in the play. Although we saw a man who is selfish and self centered about his feelings, these figures of speech show the audience a violent and morbid side of him that contradicts his usual behavior and causes the speech to stand out. Shakespeare included this scene in the Twelfth Night because it is part of the climax and the resolution of the play. It also causes uncertainty and confusion because of Sebastian and “Cesario” which engages the audience, creates comedy, and urges them to pay attention to the

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