Twelfth Night (Vol. 34) | Terence Eagleton (essay date 1967)
Terence Eagleton (essay date 1967)
SOURCE: "Language and Reality in Twelfth Night" in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 9, No. 3, Autumn, 1967, pp. 217-28.
[In the essay that follows, Eagleton contends that the language of Twelfth Night melds with its reality and, through the central subject of love, collapses and confuses the social roles of the characters.]
At the opening of Twelfth Night, Orsino describes his love for Olivia in terms which directly recall some of the paradoxes of language and illusion in other Shakespearian plays:
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou!
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute.
(1, 1)
Orsino's love...
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