Love And Desire

 Twelfth Night
 The central characters in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night are masking some aspect of
themselves. Some are hiding what they don't wish to reveal. Others use the mask to
project a front for various purposes. Set in Club Illyria, the occupants and guests seek
fulfillment of their dreams and aspirations. Club Illyria is one big Masquerade allowing
for an escape from all sorrows and personal pain. Yet through the escape some find a
kind of fleeting fulfillment while others are discarded and even cruelly destroyed.

 One is reminded of the film Saturday Night Fever. The magnetic pull of the club has its
own fascination and drama built into it. Through the beat and club rituals, some people
find a kind of meaning to existence. Boys strut their stuff. They walk the walk. And
each tries to out talk and out smart each other. The girls try to out pose each other;
while hiding their secret wants and fears. Some use the tragic mask to claim their
space and their function. Others, with more sinister intent, use it for their own alienated
sense of purpose.

 In Twelfth Night, the character of Sir Toby Belch thrives on the "scene" which he also
derides. He is the archetypical "cool" post modern cynic. All is game. Nothing is real.
The more successful he becomes in his game playing; the more abstracted and
retiring into the universe of wit and substance abuse. While traditional productions of
Twelfth Night have tended to make Belch into a fat drunken slob, they miss the
opportunity to identify his aristocratic background; his idleness drawn from a deep
cynicism regarding his very existence and the homeless mind he encases with his
body. One doesn't have to look far for intellectual snobs who substance abuse and
define their worth through the savagery and wit of their own tongue.
 For those who wish to describe Twelfth Night as the "romantic" work of Shakespeare, I ask: "How
does Malvolio fit into this?"I believe Malvolio is the counter point to the superficial nature of love
craved by most of the other characters. Malvolio is unlikable and very anal retentive. Nothing is
endearing in the personality offered by Shakespeare's character. Yet there are plenty of Malvolio's
around. Look at our current Prime Minister for example! The prissy and sanctimonious aspects of
Malvolio make for fun and offer up an easy target for Mr. Cynical Cool in the form of Belch and, for
that matter, the daringly provocative and intellectually understated, Maria.

 In this production, Malvolio is a woman. She is a woman who has felt secret desires that could not
be revealed for fear of being outcast and ostracized. The importance of Malvolio's role in the play
cannot be over-looked. Malvolio exposes frailty and weakness. She exposes her real desires and
is made to appear very foolish; even insane for doing so. Her mask of officialdom and
officiousness in nature is come undone and even draws on the secret fears of the multitudes. What
makes Olivia believe the lie of Malvolio's fault is the hysteria generated by the whispering half
truths and exaggerations caused by the deceptive machinations of Belch and Maria.

 We cannot understand Twelfth Night without understanding what happens to Malvolio. In a cool
world, she is an easy target for our vengeance and hatred. It is easy to pour scorn on her and feel
somehow justified.

 The scene with Feste disguised as Sir Topas, a clergy member, is placed at the natural high point
of the play. It becomes the climax. The love affairs do not occupy such a position in the text. Feste
seems to be supporting the aims of Belch in his torment of Malvolio. However, some examination
of what he is doing here reveals that he is simply using the moment to open up Malvolio to a
greater sense of truth and to move her away from her fanciful and illusiary view of the world.
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.139-41)

Shakespeare’s Quotes on Love

Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you, did
My heart fly to your service.
(The Tempest, 3.1.60-3)

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
(Romeo and Juliet, 2.2.121-2)

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
(A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1.1.231-2)

If thou remember'st not the slightest folly

That ever love did make thee run into,
Thou hast not loved.
(As You Like It, 2.4.33-5)
 Let me not to the marriage of true minds
 Admit impediments. Love is not love
 Which alters when it alteration finds,
 Or bends with the remover to remove:
 O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
 It is the star to every wandering bark,
 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
 Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
 Within his bending sickle's compass come:
 Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
 If this be error and upon me proved,
 I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
 (Sonnet 116)

 Eternity was in our lips and eyes,

 Bliss in our brows' bent; none our parts so poor
 But was a race of heaven.
 (Antony and Cleopatra, 1.3.36-8)
 But love, first learned in a lady's eyes,
 Lives not alone immured in the brain;
 But, with the motion of all elements,
 Courses as swift as thought in every power,
 And gives to every power a double power,
 Above their functions and their offices.
 (Love's Labours Lost, 4.3.327-55)

 Such is my love, to thee I so belong,

 That for thy right myself will bear all wrong.
 (Sonnet 88)

 Doubt thou the stars are fire;

 Doubt that the sun doth move;
 Doubt truth to be a liar;
 But never doubt I love.
 (Hamlet, 2.2.123-6)
The Clock and the Forest:Shakespeare,Love and Desire
 Dr Pippa Berry, University of Cambridge
 This essay is part of Converse, the Literature website for A-level and GCSE
students.
 In the 1960s and 1970s, a generation of literary critics paid particular
attention to the courtly model of love and courtship that we see in
Shakespeare's comedies, and also to the festive pastoral locations in which
these courtship scenarios often take place (for example, the lovers in the
wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream, the relationship between Rosalind and
Orlando in the forest in As You Like It ). In particular, a number of critics
emphasised the relationship between these plays and the Petrarchan and
Platonic ideas of love which informed courtly conduct at the court of the
unmarried queen Elizabeth I.
 In the Petrachan ideal of love, the (male) lover is forever gazing at the beauty
of an unattainable woman. Her beauty inspires spiritual rather than physical
longings in him, so that although the lover may complain about his sufferings,
he feels no real desire to make their relationship more intimate. Romeo, at
the beginning of Romeo and Juliet is a good example: he is infatuated with
Rosaline and spends his time composing poetry in her praise, but does not
make any real effort to spend time with her - very difficult from his behaviour
to Juliet when he meets her. Romeo's friend Mercutio has little patience for
this attitude, telling Romeo "If love be rough with you, be rough with love" (I,
iv). Orsino, in Twelfth Night, might be another example of the Petrachan
lover, in his one-sided relationship with Olivia (he seems in love with the idea
of love, not with Olivia). Because Petrarchism and Platonism substitued a
spiritual pleasure for erotic pleasure, critics frequently emphasised the
deferral of erotic consummation within comedies such as A Midsummer
Night's Dream. At the same time, they emphasised the importance of nature -
in the form of an idealised 'green world' - to the enactment of this refined
model of love.
Shakespeare’s Views On Love And Desire
[Link] and Juliet
 Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare’s sixteenth century tragedy, remains one of the most
famous, timeless pieces of literature yet created. This bittersweet tale documents the
forbidden attraction between two impulsive children, and their tragic suicides. The story’s
incidents, saturated with Shakespeare’s views and opinions, reveal the playwright’s
philosophies on love. Many consider Romeo and Juliet the greatest love story of all time, yet
when the “love” between the two main characters is analyzed, it cannot truly be considered
love. Instead Shakespeare wrote this play as a testament of the harsh consequences of
reckless lust and attraction, and endeavored to send an admonition. Shakespeare meant not
for Romeo and Juliet to define true love, rather, to define what true love is not.
 The balcony scene of Act II, pulsating with the passionate current existing between the
Romeo and Juliet, contains some of the richest, most beautiful poetry ever written. However,
from a more critical aspect, this scene also contains some of the most impetuous,
melodramatic reactions of two attracted individuals ever chronicled. Though they have only
known each other for a few hours, and have not yet shared “ a hundred words of [each
other’s] utterance (II. ii. 64-65), they immediately devote themselves to each other. Both
Romeo and Juliet display a dangerously impulsive nature, as well as an inability to control
their emotions, characteristic of their age. The reckless actions of Romeo seem especially
thoughtless, considering the danger he faces on the territory of his mortal enemies, the
Capulets. Yet he insists in stealing alone in the dark night to see his “love” Juliet. Romeo’s
remarkably recent and compelling obsession over Rosaline, his “old desire[,] doth in his
deathbed lie, an young affection gapes to be his heir. / That fair for which love groaned for and
would die, / With tender Juliet matched, is now not fair.” ( Prolougue Act II, 1-4 ). Thus,
Rosaline is swiftly replaced.