Orsino&Olivia Quotes

1.1, music, appetite - Love and desire, Orsino’s unrequited love is so strong it makes him sad and melancholic. This extended metaphor shows how Orsino believes that if is given enough love, he will get over her.

1.1, music, appetite - Love and desire, Orsino’s unrequited love is so strong it makes him sad and melancholic. This extended metaphor shows how Orsino believes that if is given enough love, he will get over her.

If music be the food of love, play on.
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
(1.1.1-3, 7-8)

1.4, maiden’s organ - Disguise and deception, gender, Orsino applauds Cesario’s feminine features, even saying that these features could make him a woman!

Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious. Thy small pipe
Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound;
And all is semblative a woman’s part. \n (1.4.34-35)

1.1, purged – Superficial love, again, Orsino repeatedly depicts his love as one of admiring Olivia’s outward beauty.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purg’d the air of pestilence;

1.4, unclasped, soul - Disguise and deception, gender, Orsino has spilt his life secrets to Viola. Perhaps, Shakespeare uses this as a commentary on how, normally, women could never have full deep conversations akin to the one they just had, where they could express their own opinion.

(To Viola): Thou know’st no less but all: I have unclasp’d To thee the book even of my secret soul. (1.4.13-14)

2.4, retention - Gender, Class, masters and servants, Orsino claims that women cannot love as much as men can. He also implies they’re physically incapable of loving as passionately as men. He goes on to dismiss woman’s love as superficial, an “appetite” felt only in the “palate.” While his love is constant, which contradicts what he has said before. As well, Viola challenges these videos, showing her willingness to disregard her lowly class to defend what is right.

There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart.
No woman’s heart So big, to hold so much. They lack retention.

5.1, lamb, dove - Love and desire, madness, Orsino, driven by a jealous rage, threatens to kill Cesario just to spite Olivia for her affection for him. Yet again, love seems to drive people to madness. Prevalent zoomorphism, alikining characters to lambs, ravens and doves, perhaps represents how desire can reduce someone to carnal emotions, like a savage animal.

I’ll sacrifice the lamb that I do love, \n To spite a raven’s heart within a dove. (5.1, 124-128)

5.1, more than my life - Love and desire, madness, Viola announces that she will follow the man she loves more than anyone else, Orsino. Despite the threat to her life, she is still loyal, in her heart and to her master. The madness and irrationality that love creates is shown here.

After him I love, \n More than I love these eyes, more than my life, \n More by all mores than e’er I shall love wife. (5.1, 129-131)

5.1, cub - Love and desire, madness, deception, after discovering Viola is ‘married’ with Olivia, he calls her a lying pup, who will get worse with age. Yet again, in a feeling of betrayal stemming from love, the characters are sent into spirals of madness fuelled by Viola’s disguis

O thou dissembling cub! What wilt thou be When time hath sowed a grizzle on thy case?

5.1, boy thou – Love and desire, disguise and deception, gender and sexuality, Once Viola’s true identity has been revealed, everything is restored to peace, and Orsino recalls and finally understands words told to him by Biola earlier in the play. He realises she is a women, but still refers to her as ‘[b]oy’, perhaps suggesting Orsino is still attached to Viola’s male persona. Repition of thou and second person pronouns emphasises his disbelief, but perhaps his eagerness.

Boy, thou hast said to Thou never shouldst love woman like to me. ((5.1, 258-259)

5.1, habits, queen - Love and desire, disguise and deception, gender and sexuality, Orsino continues to refer to Viola as Cesario. This passage reflects the theme of fluidity in gender and sexuality, as it suggests that Orsino is attracted to Viola in part because of her male identity. As well, Orsino may have had feelings of attraction towards Cesario, and by Viola revealing her identity, these homoerotic urges have been validated, explaining why he is so willing to court her at the end.

Cesario, come,
For so you shall be, while you are a man,
But when in other habits you are seen, \n Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen. (5.1. 369)

1.1, brine - Love and desire, Valentine details Olivia’s so-called flowery mourning, saying that she won’t reveal her face for seven years, something shed almost immediately after her first encounter with his eunuch. Yet again, we see a love that is artificial, however instead to appease in the public eye. He even describes how she’ll flood her room with tears.

Valentine: The element itself, till seven years’ heat, Shall not behold her face at ample view… / With eye-offending brine. (1.1.26-30)

1.5, divers - Love and desire, Olivia mocks Orsino’s depiction of his ‘love’, how he compares her beauty to things in nature. Her metaphor of listing and categorising her physical beauty also serves to tell Viola how superficial Orsino’s love is.

*O sir, I will not be so hard-hearted. I will give out divers schedules of my beauty: it shall be inventoried, and every particle and utensil labelled to my will… Were you sent hither to praise me?” (*1.5.224-229)

1.5, sick, distempered – Selfish love, Olivia calls out Malvolio’s selfishness and sick self-love. He sees himself so highly it toes the line of delusion. ‘Self-love’ also has the intimation of masturbation.

Olivia: O you are sick of self-love, Malvolio, and taste with distempered appetite. (1.5.82-83)

1.5, thy force – Love and desire, disguise and deception, Olivia shouts out that fate will determine her love, and fate has sent ‘Cesario’ to her. Little does she know; everything is not as it seems. APOSTROPHE

Fate, show thy force; ourselveswe do not owe.
What is decreed, must be: and be this so. (1.5.290-291)

1.5, plague, catch – Love and desire, in a metaphor, Olivia compares her fast-acting love to a disease, again showing how devastating love’s effects can be. Whilst not physically maiming you, love can just as easily disfigure you from the inside.

Even so quickly may one catch the plague? (1.5.274-278)

1.5, perchance, takes - Love and desire, Olivia is driven to undermine her social class by going after a lonely servant boy. Shakespeare shows how love can make you do things you would never normally do.

Unless, perchance, you come to me again, \n To tell me how he takes it. (1.5.261-262)

3.4, midsummer – Madness, Olivia references to Malvolio’s strange behaviour as the rabies of dogs, which is normally brought on by midsummer heat.

(About Malvolio): Why, this is very midsummer madness. (3.4.51)

3.4, bear, hell - Love and desire, this rhyming couplet provides a deceiving, yet child-like, rhyme scheme as in a picture book, where Olivia states she would follow Cesario into hell. This couplet emphasises, perhaps, how pure and innocent her love is, before she discovers the horrors of Viola’s drag.

(To Cesario): Fare thee well; \n A fiend like thee might bear my soul to hell. (3.4.196-197)

5.1, notoriously – Madness, Olivia pities Malvolio for what has happened, which shows just how powerless and stupid he really is.

He hath been most notoriously abused. (5.1.366)