Twelfth Night Madness Quotes

If music be the food of love, play on - William Shakespeare In Excess

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. The soliloquy by lovesick Orsino, Duke of Illyria, forms the opening lines of Twelfth Night. The first line is one of the most famous in the play and one of Shakespeare’s most quoted. Orsino is so maddened with desire and love for the Lady Olivia, who does not reciprocate his passions, that it makes him sick and melancholic. He instructs his musicians to play him so much musical love-food that he overdoses and no longer desires love.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. Orsino makes no secret of the fact that he is obsessed with the beautiful Olivia, and the only thing he wants it to be with her. Describing how he first fell in love, he compares himself to a deer being hunted by hounds. His unrequieted desire is bringing him much pain, sadness and not a little madness.

Have you no wit, manners, nor honesty, but to gabble like tinkers at this time of night?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3. When merrymakers Sir Toby and Sir Andrew get rowdy in Olivia’s house, her stewart Malvolio asks them if they are mad and admonishes them. And he compares them to tinkers, suggesting they are acting like bad-mannered commoners instead of noble men. Later Sir Toby turns the tables and gets revenge on Malvolio by making him appear mad in the company of Olivia.

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.
Alas, their love may be called appetite,
No motion of the liver, but the palate,
That suffer surfeit, cloyment, and revolt.
But mine is all as hungry as the sea,
And can digest as much. Make no compare
Between that love a woman can bear me
And that I owe Olivia.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Orsino claims that a woman’s love cannot be anywhere near as strong as a man’s love. Women are not capable of “passion,” he says. He even implies that women are physically incapable of a man’s strong love, their hearts aren’t big enough. He goes on to dismiss woman’s love as superficial, an “appetite” felt only in the “palate.” While his love is constant. If only Orsino could hear how ridiculous he sounds, we can only put it down to the madness sparked by his obsession for Olivia.

Go, hang yourselves all! you are idle shallow things: I am not of your element.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 3, Scene 4. Malvolio’s bitter response to the mocking concerns of Maria, Fabian and Sir Toby for him, after the Lady Olivia thinks he has gone mad. He talks down to them like they are fools of a lower intellectual class, when he is the one who looks a fool dressed in his yellow stockings and believing he could marry his employer Olivia. His ego and foolish ambition have brought him only ridicule.

What relish is in this? How runs the stream?
Or I am mad, or else this is a dream.
Let fancy still my sense in Lethe steep;
If it be thus to dream, still let me sleep!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 1. Sebastian wonders if he is mad or dreaming, because the beautiful Olivia whom he has never seen before is in love with him. He doesn’t realize she has mistaken him for Cesario – his sister disguised. Oh what a tangled gender web Shakespeare weaves, where not everybody is who they appear to be.

This is the air; that is the glorious sun.
This pearl she gave me, I do feel ‘t and see ‘t.
And though ’tis wonder that enwraps me thus,
Yet ’tis not madness. Where’s Antonio, then?
I could not find him at the Elephant.
Yet there he was; and there I found this credit,
That he did range the town to seek me out.
His counsel now might do me golden service.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 4, Scene 3. In Sebastian’s monologue, he tries to make sense of Olivia’s love for him. He treasures his new found love as a pearl and assures himself that he is not mad. But he wishes Antonio was around to give him some golden advice about his new girlfriend.

Why have you suffered me to be imprisoned,
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geck and gull
That e’er invention played on? Tell me why.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1. Malvolio confronts Olivia over the writing of the love letter. He accuses her of doing him “notorious wrong,” having him imprisoned for mental illness and making him the biggest fool that ever had a joke played on him. Of course the letter is a lie and a forgery and he has been pranked.
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