“PD’s” chosen quote
II.iv.103-13, pg 73
Orsino:
“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 mat 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.”
Orsino may realize that Olivia doesn’t love him, or cannot (completely) love him. He says that her love (or the love of any woman) can’t compare to his love for her. But he thinks she is strong enough and kind enough to handle this magnitude of love. He is “hungry as the sea,” meaning his passion and love for Olivia is endless, no matter how she feels. He hopes, though, that she can learn to love him for his devotion to her.
Add before the above quote
from line 96:
Viola/Cesario-“But if she cannot love you, sir--
Orsino-[I] cannot be so answered.
Viola/Cesario-Sooth, but you must. /Say some lady, as perhaps there is,
/Hath for your love as great a pang of heart/As you have for Olivia. You cannot love her;
/You tell her so. Must she not then be answered?”
love...love...love. The reader is going to need more explanation/explication of this quote than "love is all you need."
ReplyDeletePerhaps you might get under this by discussing Orsino's rather misogynistic bent that women do not (cannot!) love as deeply nor truly as men. Viola (as Cesario) thrashes him for this claim.
She explains her own pains and pangs for love, and the audience agrees, in the know, as we are about Viola's mad crush on Orsino.