Twelfth Night: Key Quotations (Edexcel GCSE English Literature)

Twelfth Night: Key Theme Quotations

To access the highest marks for AO1, you need to use “pertinent, direct references from across the text, including quotations”. Remember, then, that there are a number of ways that you can show your understanding of the play: you can provide quotations, but it is equally valid to summarise, paraphrase and reference plot events as well. The highest-mark responses will do a combination of these things by carefully using key quotations and connecting them to ideas from the wider play. For your extract question, it is especially important to be able to locate the extract within the play as a whole and show awareness of the events that precede and follow your extract. 

Below are a selection of helpful quotations accompanied by analysis of language, form, and structure. The analysis uses precise subject terminology that reflects what is expected at the top end of AO2.

Quotes are arranged by three significant themes in the play:

• Love and desire

• Appearances and reality

• Gender and sexuality

This is not an exhaustive list of key quotations from the play; it is simply a selection of some useful examples. Once you know Twelfth Night well enough, you will acquire favourite lines and stage directions of your own that will allow you to show off your technical understanding.

Love and desire

“If music be the food of love, play on. / Give me excess of it” — Orsino, Act 1, Scene 1

Meaning and context

• These are the opening lines of the play

• Lady Olivia does not return Orsino’s love, and he suffers from lovesickness

• If music nourishes love, Orsino hopes that by gorging on music he might make his feelings go away 

Analysis

• Shakespeare writes these lines in blank verse:

  • The verse form is associated with speeches about love, meaning that it sets an apt tone for the play from the outset:

    • The iambic pentameter rhythm replicates the sound of a heartbeat

    • The poetic rhythm therefore sets an apt tone for a speech about unrequited love

    • The final line is 9 syllables rather than 10, reflecting how incomplete Orsino feels without Olivia

    • The musical rhythm of verse also draws attention to the metaphor of music as food 

• Orsino’s language immediately establishes love as the central theme of the play:

  • His speech is a soliloquy, and his initial isolation on stage indicates his loneliness

• His tone is hyperbolic as it is impossible, after all, for music to fulfil the demands of love:

  • The implied meaning is that love cannot be satisfied by substitutions for reciprocated love, even though Orsino wishes otherwise

“What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter, / Present mirth hath present laughter: / What’s to come is still unsure” — Feste, Act 2, Scene 3

Meaning and context

• Feste sings these lines in Olivia’s house

• The song reflects the play’s spirit of carpe diem by emphasising how short-lived romantic love can be

Analysis

• Feste makes the point that love ought to be seized quickly before it disappears:

  • His rhetorical question emphasises the mystery and unknowability of love:

    • All that one can be sure of, he argues, is that love does not last forever

  • The repetition of “present” highlights the importance of seizing the present moment:

    • Feste suggests that giving into love should be as natural as laughing at a good joke 

• The song also reflects Olivia’s recent change in character:

  • Before meeting Cesario, she resolved to mourn her brother for seven years without showing her face in public: 

    • She changes her mind the moment that she fell for Cesario 

    • Olivia clearly recognises Feste’s assertion that “in delay there lies no plenty” and seizes love at the first opportunity 

“Love sought is good, but given unsought is better” — Olivia, Act 3, Scene 1

Meaning and context

• Here, Olivia tries to woo Viola (as Cesario) 

• She tells “him” that love is best when it is given freely, rather than requested

Analysis

• Olivia makes a clear contrast between different approaches to love in Twelfth Night:

  • She argues that the love she offers freely to Cesario is superior to the love that Orsino seeks desperately from Olivia

• Olivia’s statement applies to other characters in the play as well:

  • Sir Andrew seeks Olivia’s love, but his efforts only make him less attractive to her

  • Viola selflessly demonstrates her love for Orsino by acting as his messenger to Olivia, despite knowing that, as Cesario, he cannot love her the way she does him 

  • Malvolio’s efforts to impress Olivia result only in his embarrassment

  • Antonio sacrifices his safety for Sebastian by accompanying him into Illyria, and requests nothing in return:

    • In all of the above relationships, Shakespeare shows that it is better to give love freely than to do so in the hope of reciprocation

Appearances and reality

Paired quotations

“I am not what I am” — Viola (as Cesario), Act 3, Scene 1

“Nothing that is so, is so” — Feste, Act 4, Scene 1

Meaning and context

• In the first quotation, Viola (as Cesario) reveals that she is not what she seems

• Viola hopes to discourage Olivia from falling in love with Cesario

• In second quotation, Feste addresses Sebastian but believes that he is speaking to Cesario

Analysis

• Both of these quotations encapsulate the confusions of identity and appearance that characterise Twelfth Night

• Both are also excellent examples of how Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to add nuance and humour to his comedy:

  • Olivia believes that Cesario is being evasive, but the audience knows that Cesario is being completely honest:

    • This continues the running joke of Viola giving away her secret identity but being misunderstood each time

    • In Act 1, Scene 5, for example, she explicitly tells Olivia that “I am not that I play” but Olivia fails to recognise the significance of the confession

  • Feste’s line to Sebastian is deeply ironic as he does not realise how truthful his description of events actually is:

    • Sebastian truly is not who Feste believes he is

    • The audience also knows that identity in the disordered world of Twelfth Night is often fluid and unpredictable

• These lines are both short and utilise repetition to make them especially memorable:

  • The repetition gives each quotation a contradictory quality, emphasising the play’s general sense of confusion 

“I am all the daughters of my father’s house / And all the brothers too: and yet I know not” — Viola (as Cesario), Act 2, Scene 4

Meaning and context

• In this scene, Viola (as Cesario) comes close to revealing that she loves Orsino

• She disguises her love by speaking of an imagined sister who loved a man

• When Orsino asks whether this “sister” died because of her love, Viola gives this ambiguous response

Analysis

• These lines are laced with irony, as Viola’s response has several different meanings:

  • On the surface, the quotation obliquely answers Orsino’s question by implying that the imaginary sister is no more

  • By referring to herself as “all the daughters”, though, she suggests her true identity as a woman

  • Her reference to “brothers” is also a heartbreaking allusion to Sebastian:

    • At this point in the play, Viola believes that Sebastian is dead

    • The line therefore hints at her unresolved grief at the loss of her brother

• Her claim to “know not” the fate of her imagined sister might be seen as either tragic or hopeful:

  • As these lines refer to Sebastian, it is sad that Viola cannot bring herself to say that the sister, though imaginary, is dead

  • On the other hand, the lines leave open the possibility that Sebastian survived, something that she later discovers to be true

• The ambiguity of these lines is enhanced by how little the audience knows of Viola as a character at this point in the play:

  • Viola is not referred to by her real name until late in the play:

    • This means that, at this point, the audience knows her only as Cesario

    • In this sense, Cesario’s identity truly is both male and female

“Well, I’ll put it on and I will dissemble myself in’t; / and I would I were the first that ever dissembled in such a gown” — Feste, Act 4, Scene 2

Meaning and context

• In this scene, Feste — speaking to Sir Toby — prepares to dress up as a priest in order to fool (“dissemble”) Malvolio, who is imprisoned as a madman

• Sir Toby’s plan is for Feste to perform a mock-exorcism on Malvolio

Analysis

• Here, Feste makes a pun to satirise the church:

  • He compares his behaviour to that of unscrupulous and deceptive priests who have used their authority to purposefully mislead others:

    • The joke is appropriate to the traditional tone of “Twelfth Night” festivities, which commonly involved poking fun at the clergy

  • In Elizabethan England, exorcism was outlawed by the Church of England:

    • The joke may therefore be directed more at Roman Catholicism, ridiculing a ritual still practised

    • In Elizabethan England, the Church of England taught that the Roman Catholic Church endorsed heretical doctrine concerning the supernatural

    • These religious differences were part of the reason why England was attacked by the Spanish Armada in 1588 

• Notably, Malvolio is locked in a dark cell, and is unable to see Feste’s costume:

  • This suggests that a disguise can transcend mere appearance and affect the very character of the wearer

Gender and sexuality

“Diana’s lip is not more rubious. Thy small pipe / Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound, / And all is semblative a woman’s part” — Orsino, Act 1, Scene 4

Meaning and context

• By Act 1 Scene 4, Cesario has spent three days working for Orsino and become one of his favourites 

• In these lines, Orsino (addressing Viola) praises Cesario's physical appearance as he believes that Cesario’s feminine qualities might endear him (and therefore Orsino) to Olivia 

Analysis

• Shakespeare utilises dramatic irony heavily in this interaction:

  • The audience is aware that Cesario is actually a woman:

    • Orsino’s comments about Cesario’s feminine qualities are therefore comically accurate in ways that Orsino does not realise

  • The lines also play on the reality of a young boy playing a “woman’s part” in Shakespeare’s theatre:

    • Shakespeare’s audience would have known that the boy actor playing Viola would have been chosen precisely because of the androgynous qualities that Orsino identifies

    • The joke thus breaks the theatrical illusion in a surprising but humorous manner

• The joke also raises subtle questions about Orsino’s sexuality:

  • Orsino compliments Cesario’s body in poetic fashion, focusing on his ruby-red lips and “small pipe”:

    • “Small pipe” is a double entendre that ostensibly refers to Cesario’s piping voice, but also to his sexual organs (the joke is emphasised further by a line break that delays Orsino’s meaning)

    • Orsino’s focus on these qualities implies that he might be sexually attracted to the young woman cross-dressed as a boy

  • His seeming attraction to Cesario foreshadows Orsino’s eventual marriage to Viola

Paired quotations

“Cesario, come, / For so you shall be, while you are a man, / But when in other habits you are seen, / Orsino’s mistress, and his fancy’s queen” — Orsino, Act 5, Scene 1

"Give me thy hand and let me see in thy woman's weeds" — Orsino, Act 5, Scene 1

 Meaning and context

• Orsino speaks these lines to Viola during the play’s resolution after Viola’s true identity is revealed

• He declares his love for Viola, who is still dressed as a man, and pledges to marry her

Analysis

• The first of these quotations strongly suggests that Orsino was romantically attracted to Viola’s male persona:

  • Even after Viola’s identity comes to light, he refers to her as Cesario:

    • He claims to do this because Viola is still dressed as a man, but he nevertheless agrees to marry her in this “habit” rather than in “woman’s reeds”

    • The audience never actually sees Viola revert to dressing as a woman

    • To the audience, therefore, his “fancy’s queen” is and remains the cross-dressed Cesario

  • Orsino’s reference to “other habits” is vague, and does not deny the possibility of Viola dressing as Cesario again in the future:

    • Given his use of Cesario’s name, the audience may get the impression that Orsino enjoys prolonging the pretence of Viola’s masculinity

• The second quotation signals the happy ending of the play’s primary romance:

  • Orsino takes Viola’s hand to signal their unity

  • The act of holding hands also anticipates the music and accompanying dance that traditionally concluded plays in Shakespeare’s time:

    • However, the line also reminds us that Orsino has not yet seen Viola in women’s clothes

    • The line leaves room for doubt as to whether Orsino will still be attracted to Viola as a woman