Love and Desire in Twelfth Night

The theme of love is introduced in the first line of the play “If music be the food of love, play on” this establishes it as a central theme. All major characters in the play experience some kind of love or desire for someone, whether it’s true love or not is something to be debated but still... There are many kinds of love in Illyria; we have romantic love, unrequited love, master/servant love and sibling love.

Love’s a funny thing here though; it’s always changing and doesn't seem to be very stable... In the beginning Orsino claims to love Olivia but as we see he doesn't really know her that doesn't stop him from showering her in bad poetry though, as soon as Viola reveals she’s a woman though he forgets all about Olivia and jumps ship and marries her.

 His melodrama is only matched by Olivia’s mourning. She claims to be so frickin sad and vows to wear a veil for 7 years but the first sexy guy to come round (Cesario/Viola) she starts throwing herself on. This seems a bit extreme doesn't it? Shakespeare seems to be making fun of the upper class here; who are more into the idea of something (like love) that they actually love someone....I mean Orsino had his little page boys go and court Olivia instead of going although he was so in love with her while Feste is the sane one who's in the background making fun of both of them.  And I mean we all know someone like that (hell we may even be someone like that ourselves) who sees a nice girl in a Mario’s line somewhere and starts writing bad poems about how her hair smells so good and he’s so in love without even knowing her name. We can't exactly call that undying love now can we?

Now let’s talk about Sebastian and Antonio; it’s pretty debated but I think it’s safe to assume that Antonio had a thing for him. And I mean it makes sense right? He saved him and took care of him and was willing to following him although he’s a wanted man in Illyria. I think there’s more of a chance of that being true love than Malvolio who just wanted Olivia’s status or Orsino who just thought they'd look super cute together. But what happened to Antonio in the end? Did he end up with Sebastian? Of course not, this was The Elizabethan era and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness up to the 90s. The 1990s. So when everyone one else was getting married to people they basically met two hours ago poor Antonio was in jail. 

Viola and Orsino's relationship summed up 

By the end of the play people just seem t be pairing up at random with whoever; the first time Sebastian met Olivia he married her, and I mean sure she thought he was his sister but I mean still... he went along with it. "Hey this sexy rich lady wants to marry me, why not?" When Olivia found this out she didn't even have a problem, hey they must be the same person anyway...
On the other side of the spectrum we have the lower class people like Maria and Sir Toby who instead of flowery poetry have double entendres all about sexy sex stuff. Hey, at least they liked each other.
Shakes further satirizes romantic love by showing us how sibling love (Viola and Sebastian) and master/servant love (Maria and Olivia) is more constant than anything else. 

It's safe to say that there was a little exploration of homosexuality as we saw obviously with Sebastian and Antonio but also with Orsino and Viola (hey, he thought she was a guy and there were hints) and with Olivia and Viola (she was turned on by "Cesario's" feminine-ness) more about that later though.
Anyway feel free to tell me what you think about this theme and why you disagree or agree or add in something you think is important :)