Twelfth Night – Quotes

If music be the food of love, play on. Hyperbole of language shows he’s in love with the sensation of being in love,Could be seen as a strong capacity for feeling.Extravagance could be passion.
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou. Language is clichéd. – Reinforced by fact he does not mention Olivia’s name until end of speech.Language of extended metaphors, paradox, apostrophe and simile.
That instant I was turned into a hart and my desires like fell and cruel hounds e’er since pursue me. Cliché.Spiritual form of love stressed by vivid imagery of his consuming physical desires.- Refers to legend of Actaeon, a huntsman who was turned into a deer and devoured by his hounds for glimpsing the virtuous Diana bathing.
Water once a day her chamber round with eye offending brine. Intense passions.Metaphor?
What country, friends, is this? Her brisk question suggests she is resourceful, thinking about the situation at hand, instead of succumbing to grief, fatigue or despair.Instantly contrasted to Orsino and Olivia who are presented as static, passively instead of actively instigating.
O that I served that lady. Shares with Viola the loss of a brother.A sense of emotional identification.
Conceal me what I am. Perhaps following the trauma she adopts male clothing as some kind of physical, social or psychological protection.Eunuchs had a powerful position in the Ottoman court.
You must confine yourself within the modest limits of order. His motivations are selfish, he lives to enjoy drinking and merry making.Sir Toby can be seen as an embodiment of the play’s festive, comic energies.Characterised by excess – devoted to self-gratification without much thought for others.
Very fool. Andrew is wealthy but clearly a fool.Dramatic irony, audience thinks he’s really clever.
Hangs like flax on a distaff. The fact jokes are lost on Andrew adds to audiences enjoyment.
Secret soul. Tell secrets to soulmate.Cesario combines physical qualities of both male and female.Clearly formed a trusting relationship – companionship which marriage is based on.
You are no stranger. Ironic, Viola is a stranger, Cesario is not.By choosing not to show the first stages of their relationship presents it to us as quickly but solidly begun.
Barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife. In love with Orsino, with characteristic clarity and directness, confesses love.Rhyming couplet ensures the information has maximum dramatic impact.Humour for audience now comes from dramatic irony.
Call his fortunes thine. Ironic promise of shared fortunes.Sharing in his life is exactly what she is aiming at but through marrying him herself.
Loath to cast away my speech. Prose interjection of her own speech deflates Orsino’s romantic pretentions.Alternates between that and deflating commentary as if she is not addressing the right woman.
Now out of your text. Developing intimacy revealed when she echoes imagery.
Item 2 lips.. 2 grey eyes. Takes up the task of deflating the conventional poetic device known as blazon.Lovers eyes, lips, hair and cheeks are discussed separately in clichéd terms.
Make me a willow cabin at your gate. Extremely persuasive.Powerful invocation of love which in its intensity turns up the erotic heat of the encounter.
Even so quickly may one catch the plague. Metaphor.Losing control.Imagery is a brief reminder of the darker side of the play’s festive, holiday world.
What is decreed must be; and be this so. Ultimately she is resigned to see how events unfold giving or leaving control in the hands of fate.
Better a witty fool than a foolish wit/Calcullus non facit monachum. Not a clown in his brain.
Stars shine darkly over me. Imagery of fate is echoed by Sebastian and so even before the meet they are linked by shared vocab to explain events.
Both born in an hour. Dramatic irony, audience knows Sebastian is alive. Shakespeare was a father to twins, one of whom died.
Have many enemies in Orsino’s court.Come what may, I do adore thee so, danger shall seem sport, and I will go. Prepared to risk himself.Rhyming couplet.Delivered in verse as opposed to prose of the rest of the scene gives it importance and the speaker a status.Some productions emphasise a homosexual relationship, would have been comedic at the time, especially as only men were allowed on stage.
I am a man. Concludes, then makes some general comments about women in love, where she is talking about her own plight, helplessly in love with Orsino, as he is about Olivia, and draws parallels between their situations.
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness. Apostrophe.Her disguise has the ability to shape women’s ‘hearts’ with a false impression due to our ‘frailty’.
It is too hard a knot for me to untie. Metaphor.Audience can see a resolution because they know Sebastian is alive.Regularity of rhyming couplet reassures us that it will indeed be well.
O mistress mine, why are you roaming? Song contributes to the sense of melancholy permeating the play and this is true to the scene’s numerous references to time.
Dost thou think that because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale? An intebrated but eloquent rhetorical question, he dismisses sobriety – both literally and in the wider metaphorical sense of the attempt to deny appetite and pleasure.Clash between revelry and repression establishes the conflict which will lead to Malvolio’s inevitable undoing.Challenges Malvolio’s right to impose his puritanical codes of behaviour on the revellers.When puritans came to power one of their first acts was to close all theatres. ‘Puritan’ an enemy to the audience. This is not just an old drunk’s greedy self indulgence but rather a defence of a way of life which includes the theatre itself.
Time-pleaser. Seems to steward hours and minutes as well as drink and money, in contrast to Sir Toby’s extravagant spending on all counts.
What kind of woman is’t/she is of your complexion. One line of shared iambic pentameter.Could show they are destined to be together.
Fancies are more giddy and unfirm, more longing, wavering, sooner lost and won. In act 1 he prasied Olivia for her constancy to the memory of her dead brother and here begins by admitting that women are more steadfast than men in matters of the heart.Fulfils Feste’s comment on ‘changeable taffeta’ by contradicting himself and stating that it is men who are better able to bear the strength of the passion of love and that women’s hearts ‘lack retention’ and can only offer the brief and quickly sated ‘appetite’ in return.
You tell her so. Suggests that if she were a woman she might love Orsino as her ‘sister’ loved a man.She seems to only broach this in the context of his rejection of her love.Dramatic irony of the ‘man to man’ with the woman who is in love with him, makes for comedy and pathos in the scene.
Mine is all hungry as the sea. Almost competitive in the extent of his love.An image which connects him with Viola, spat out by the sea.
She ‘We’ + ‘she’ shows how desperately Viola is thinking about different identities and the strain of adjustment.
July 9, 2019