Essay
A* Twelfth Night Extract Exemplar Essay 4
Act 3, Scene 1; Olivia declares her love for Cesario (Viola in disguise).
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Twelfth Night extract practice essay 4Act 3, Scene 1
Olivia declares her love for Cesario
This extract, taking place during the play’s period of disunity, is notable for its abundance of
wit and linguistic play, the folly of the Countess Olivia, and how she has been deceived by Viola’s
disguise as the male Cesario. We see how the disguise deprives Viola of the control of her own
destiny, as she is forced to enigmatically resist Olivia’s romantic advances owing to the fact that they
are both female and that Olivia is the courting target of the Duke Orsino, Viola’s master.
Immediately, Shakespeare establishes Olivia’s attraction to the page Cesario through the use
of the imperative ‘Give me leave, beseech you’, which sets in motion the Countess’ desperate and
often hopeless attempt to seduce the disguised Viola. Given that this is only their second meeting
together on stage, it is possible to discern an element of absurdity behind Olivia’s haste; this is
emphasised by her utterance ‘A ring in chase of you’. The ‘ring’ symbolises how Olivia has become
completely enamoured by Cesario to the extent where she is prepared to marry him, whilst also
drawing upon the element of hyperbole we come to expect of the romantic comedy in the sense
that marriage would have been seen in Elizabethan times as a sacred ritual based on careful
planning and good social matches. Therefore, Shakespeare arguably makes marriage synonymous
with absurdity, thus satirising the social institution. Olivia’s obsession with Cesario is further
highlighted by Shakespeare’s use of the interrogative form in her utterances ‘What might you think?’
and ‘That tyrannous heart can think?’ – they form part of Olivia’s long ratio of speech at this stage in
the extract relative to Cesario, and serve to express the Countess’ desperation to see her love
reciprocated and her insecurity in not knowing whether it is so.
Olivia’s haste is made further ironic by the juxtaposition of this ‘new’ character with her
initial depiction as a ‘cloistress’. This extract demonstrates that Olivia is hardly a ‘cloistress’ since she
abandons all observance to social norms and pursues Cesario with a particularly vigorous clarity of
purpose. As a result, Olivia’s inconstancy and changeability (paralleling that of the Duke Orsino)
makes her a subject of folly in the play, in which the audience revels in mockery of her. Given Olivia’s
(and Orsino’s) high social position, this may appear quite daring on Shakespeare’s part as he appears
to satirise the value of feudalism if such emotional and impulsive characters are able to exercise the
greatest influence within a kingdom. In any case, Viola’s monosyllabic and short utterances relative
to those of Olivia imply an element of madness behind the Countess’ pursuit; in response to Olivia’s
heavily poetic declaration of love, Viola replies bluntly in prose ‘I pity you’. Viola’s rationality clearly
juxtaposes Olivia’s haste, while her ‘pity’ emphasises the danger of the disguise since the verb
suggests that Viola regrets the damage that her disguise will do. By this point in the play, it could be
argued that the consequences of the disguise have spiralled out of control – a fate suffered similarly
by Portia in The Merchant of Venice, another of Shakespeare’s transvestite comedies – and thus
accentuate the disunity expected at this stage of the play according to the Essential Movement.
Shakespeare implies a deeper story behind Olivia’s haste in her utterance ‘The clock
upbraids me with the waste of time’ in response to the strike of a clock. The entire play can be
considered a race against time in the sense that disorder and open expression of love can only exist
in the strictly-ordered world of Illyria during the twelfth night festivities. In Elizabethan times, such
festivities meant that the world as it was known was turned upside down and thus gave way to
unexpected behaviour. Perhaps Olivia proceeds with such haste because she knows that her chances
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