This Month's Twelfth Night Feature >>
Theme...
Worse, in Twelfth Night love is consistently associated with madness. After seeing Cesario for the first time, the love struck Olivia say at the end of Act I, "Mine eye (is) too great a flatterer for my mind" (I, v., l.309). Love is a form of insanity, in which one's senses deceive and overcome one's reason. In Act IV, scene iii, Sebastian waxes about his instantaneous love for Olivia:
This is the air, that is the glorious sun, This pearl she gave to me, I do feel't and see't, And though 'tis wonder that enrapts me thus, Yet 'tis not madness…. (IV, iii. ll.1-4).Sebastian's denial that his love for Olivia is madness only underscores the connection between unbounded passion and an unbalanced mind. Shortly thereafter, Sebastian says that because of his love for Olivia, he is willing to "distrust (his) eyes" and "wrangle with (his) reason" (IV, iii.ll.13-14). In a play in which many references are made to being possessed by the devil and being victimized by witchcraft, love is of necessity equated with being mad.
Attention: The Othello Page is now more than just the Othello Page -- I'm featuring essays on the following plays courtesy of All Shakespeare: This month's essays:
As You Like It
Antony and Cleopatra
Coriolanus
Hamlet
Henry IV
Julius Caesar
King Lear
Macbeth
Merchant of Venice
Midsummer Night's Dream
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Richard III
The Tempest
Twelfth Night
Sonnets
Other Twelfth Night Links: Twelfth Night Summary, Twelfth Night Essays, and Shakespeare Twelfth Nights Quotes, at All Shakespeare.
Four songs from Twelfth Night -- learn these tunes and amaze your loved one!
The Twelfth Night Study Guide at Enotes -- We love enotes!
Twelfth Night -- at a fellow geocities page! Awesome!