Essay: Orsino’s Narcissism and Idealism in “Twelfth Night”: Exploring Love’s Effects on Us

Orsino’s exclamation of “Methought she purged the air of pestilence” shows us the strength that the experience of love has on us. Throughout Twelfth Night Shakespeare vividly presents love as fluid and dynamic with different characters having varying mindsets to what they believe the perception of love is. Love is portrayed as madness provoking, idealistic and narcissistic. By using characterisation Shakespeare is able to demonstrate the many forms that love pertains and how these experiences can challenge the rationality present within us.
We are shown narcissistic love through the experience of love presented through Malvolio and Orsino. This form of love is broadcasted through Malvolio’s greed and temptation to move up in class and rule over those who he currently serves. Malvolio’s exaggerated fantasies of him “To become Count Malvolio!” identifies and solidifies the impression of Malvolio’s exceeding self love. Furthermore the fantasy he has regarding Sir Toby and Olivia. We see this emphasised as he wishes to preach “I know my place as I would they should do theirs, to for my kinsman Toby”. His infatuation with marrying Olivia to become a count and rule over Sir Toby, is demonstrative of the suspected inflation he possesses and how his Narcissism takes over his though for rational decision and reasoning, leading him to jump to conclusions without further thought or investigation. Orsino also demonstrates this Narcissistic trait through his personal ambition of love and how it is him who is the supposed magnificent one rather than Olivia, we see this as self flattery as he believes he is the best at loving, we are confronted with the question of, is Orsino truly in love with Olivia, or is he in love with his own efforts of the presentation of the experience of love. This puts an idea into our minds of, do we truly love someone or is the power they give to us the causes the attraction we see before us.
Madness can also be provoked by the experience of love. We see love as a powerful force, one that can encapsulate and enchant or embody one’s mind and soul. this is emphasised through Olivia ,Sebastian and Malvolio. love is commonly associated with madness. After seeing Cesario for the first time, Olivia, lovestruck, utters at the end of Act One, “Mine eye [is] too great a flatterer for my mind”. Love is a form of insanity, in which one’s five senses deceive and overcome one’s instinctual thought. In Act Four, scene Three, Sebastian reveals his instant love for Olivia. Sebastian’s denial that his love for Olivia is of madness, only emphasises the connection between passion and his unbalanced mind. Soon after, Sebastian believes that because of his love for Olivia, he is happy and willing to “distrust mine eyes” and “wrangle with my reason”, meaning he shall riot against all instinctual reason to question this such marriage. In a play in which many references are made to being possessed by the devil and being victimized by witchcraft, love is of necessity equated with being mad. There is one character in Twelfth Night for who’s love mingled with self-infatuation is madness, the steward Malvolio, whose professions of love to Olivia lead to him being restrained as a lunatic. His madness is caused by a forged letter by Maria impersonating Olivia’s hand, In his frantic excitement and lunacy disrupt one’s natural instinct to question random articles of paper, this leads him to fall for Sir Toby and Maria’s plan, in which he addresses the letter to himself. We are shown emphasise here that love is eminent in the production of madness within someone’s life, this opens our eyes, and as the audience we view a new insight into the intertwining of love and madness through the experience of love.
The experience of love finally introduces idealism, Idealism in Twelfth Night is shown through Orsino. He presents the experience of love once again about himself. He idealises himself as such a wonderful and amazing lover, This is a common trait of Elizabethan men involving the petrarchan form of poetry they scribe, We question the validity of Orsino’s love for Olivia, and come to the realisation he is attached to love itself. We are suggested that Orsino is more impressed with his own wit, in an effort to show off to other men in his court, than its desired effect on Olivia. Orsino is the powerful Duke of Illyria and a bachelor, who persists in pursuing his love for Olivia in spite of her continuing rejection of him. He is melodramatic, self-indulgent, and so absorbed in his own fantasies that he cannot recognize that it is not Olivia he is in love with, but love itself