Shakespeare succeeds in displaying countless themes and motifs throughout Twelfth Night, however my favorite would have to be his representation of love, or at least the concept of it. Most of our important characters feel, or at least say they feel, the strong and important emotion of love, and I simply love Shakespeare take on it. Love for the characters in Twelfth Night is all very sudden and sporadic; almost a physical thing that is affecting them. Orsino says at one point that his appetite for love sickens him (1.1.1-3). Viola comments in reference to her newfound love for Orsino that she is a desperate state for her master’s love (2.3.35-36). Antonio also seems to be greatly affected by Sebastian that he says in act 2 scene 2 “if you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant”.
Love seems to be something that the characters are suffering from, as if it’s a disease that they are all just suddenly catching. They are also willing to risk a lot for it, as we find later in the play that character’s love interest will lead to violence. In Act V Scene I, Orsino threatens to kill Cesario for being Olivia’s apparent lover. Also, the whole reason Antonio is arrested is because he was found after seeking to protect who he thought was Sebastian and was really Cesario. When Cesario doesn’t give him his purse to pay off his bail debt, Antonio expresses how hurt he is, and compares the thought of Sebastian betraying him as misery (3.4.216).
By the end of the play, our four main lovers are now in content relationships; one’s that were not formed until the very last scene. The easy swap both psychologically and emotionally for Olivia and Orsino to love the twin they end up with is the icing on the cake of one of the most melodramatic Shakespeare plays I have ever read. To make all of these character so able to change their emotions so easily not only makes the plot that much harder to predict, but is also a wonderful display of love as more of an idea than as a feeling.
When modern students read Shakespeare they are often baffled at the quickness of characters to fall in love and marry. People in Shakespeare’s time had a very different understanding of the amount of time and effort it requires to build a relationship. Twelfth Night takes this cultural difference wot the extreme for the sake of comedy. You already name all the switches in affections which result in the matches we see in the final act. They appear especially ridiculous to us now, but still appear silly in the context of Shakespeare’s other plays. the frivolousness and fleetingness of the characters’ love for each other is one outrageous element of this play which exaggerates an element of other plays.
The characters’ temperamental nature in regards to love is probably the best part of the play for me. Many of the characters’ decisions and feelings seem to be quite spur of the moment, and in a comedic sense, this works perfectly. I think the most poignant example of this was when Olivia hastily marries Sebastian, believing him to be his sister, Viola, who Olivia believes to be Cesario, making Olivia go out of her way to mistakenly marry somebody that she does not know at all. However, even if she were to marry Cesario at that same point instead, it would not be much better since Cesario is not who she claims to be. It should also be noted that Olivia did not even know Cesario/Viola for very long either, making this whole situation hysterical no matter which way you were to look at it.