Analysis of Voila's Speech in Twelfth Night

This study will provide a critical analysis of the speech of Viola from Act II, Scene 2, lines 17-28. Viola is puzzling over her meeting with Olivia. Viola had posed as a male servant to Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, and went to express the Duke's love to Olivia. However, Olivia once again spurns the Duke's love, as she had done a number of times previously. Instead, Olivia is taken by "Cesario," who is in fact Viola in the disguise of a young man. Malvolio, the steward of Olivia, returns to Viola a ring which Olivia says Viola had left, apparently as a token of the Duke's love for Olivia. But Viola has left no ring, and she is puzzled by the meaning of this returned ring. Viola, musing to herself after the exit of Malvolio, concludes that Olivia has, indeed, begun to fall in love with her (Viola) who had been in the guise of Cesario.

Twelfth Night, above all, is a comedy, a comedy of romance, so we would be well advised to approach Viola's speech as an expression of romantic comedy and not profound philosophy about human nature. At the same time, in almost every speech of any length, Shakespeare has something interesting to say about human behavior and relationships, however lightly comedic the play itself in which the speech appears. Viola's speech is no exception. The play is about deception, illusion, and especially self-deception. Shakespeare is saying that human beings generally see what they want to see and don't see what they want to see. They want to feel pleasure an

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he pregnant enemy does much" (62). There is much irony in the play, and Viola's speech brings out some of it. It is ironic, for example, that Olivia, so determined to maintain her grieving for her own brother and to keep her heart closed to the Duke, falls so quickly in love with the messenger who brings the entreaties of the Duke. Shakespeare is not contemptuous of these characters, which means that we must look for a larger meaning in these events. The playwright does not mean to coldly judge Olivia and the others for their shortcomings, but he is saying something about the control human beings have or do not have over their lives and loves. He is not saying that Olivia does not really care about her brother, or that she is a shallow person for falling so quickly and easily in love with Cesario/Viola in the midst of her grieving for that brother. Shakespeare is saying here, through Viola, that life is full of surprises, and that whatever schedule one might have for the affairs of the heart, from grief to love, life will intervene and disrupt that schedule with no warning whatsoever. "This lady" might be love itself, or the "Fortune" of the next line, as much as Olivia. In that context, Viola is not wondering only about the cha

Category: Literature - A