Twelfth Night Essays -- Literary Analysis, Shakespeare

In Shakespeares play, Twelfth Night or What you Will, the fibers are involved in a plot complete with trickery, disguise, and honey. Each character is defined non by his or her gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to take because of the complicated situation that arises. hostile their gender, the speech the characters give an insight to their true personalities. In the Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery and over-dramatic oral communication, long poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his emotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches.Duke Orsinos repeated usage of poetical verse and poetic devices to describe his woes from love set him apart from other character. By using deep nonliteral language and flowing poetic structure, Shakespeare conveys Orsinos melodramatic nature. In Orsinos first speech, he takes a complicated and metaphorical approach to rationalize his love f or Olivia instead of directly stating his desires. Instead of using prose, Orsino speaks in silent person verse which is significantly fancier and floral in language. He says, If medication be the food of love, play on /Give me lavishness of it, that, surfeiting, /The inclination may sicken, and so die (1.1 3-5) to compare his love for Olivia to his love of music. Orsino wants the overabundance of it, so that he can become bored of music and indeed his love for Olivia. This also shows that he is excessively wordy throughout his speech and often prolongs sentences with repetitive phrases such as ,play on/Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting (1.1.3-4) and may sicken, and so die (1.1.5) that have the same meaning. His long-winded language illustrates the dramatic quality... ...ve./To spite a ravens heart in spite of appearance a dove (5.1.130-131), to finally summarize his long speech. Orsino uses metaphors to compare the lamb to Viola and the dove to Olivia. Viola is t he gentle lamb that Orsino claims he ordain sacrifice in order to attain revenge against Olivia, a misleadingly beautiful dove with a dark heart. By using a metaphor to end his speech, Orsino exits with a more dramatic and profound elan than if he directly stated his plans to kill Viola. Despite the anger in the speech in Act 5, Orsino uses similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, repetition, and flowery language to convey his dramatic nature. These techniques often convolute the headmaster meaning of Orsinos words because of the metaphorical structure. It is however the same traits that border him aside other characters in the play and make Orsino memorable to the audience.