Orsino Flashcards
What are some traits of Orsino?
- powerful nobleman
- trustworthy
- wealthy
- lovesick
What are some boundaries crossed by Orsino?
- gender
- emotional
- financial
“If music be the food of love, play on”
Act 1 Scene 1
- abstract noun
- metaphor
- crossing gender boundary
- love is so hungry is can devour everything
- stereotypical lover
- iambic pentameter: suggests high social rank
- Love personified as something unwanted and not easily avoidable
- self indulgent, melodramatic
“To pay this debt of love but to a brother”
Act 1 Scene 1
- metaphor
- implying Olivia owes him love since she’s using all her love on mourning
“Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious”
Act 1 Scene 4
- post modifier
- lexical set of femininity: archetypal Elizabethan woman
- reference to goddess of the moon and fertility
“I myself am best when in least company”
Act 1 Scene 4
- claims to prefer being on his own: ironic, not true
- Cesario has the most feminine authority
“Give me some music! Now, good morrow, friends!”
Act 2 Scene 4
- mirrors A1S1
- imperative
- heightened emotional state
“Too old, by heaven”
Act 2 Scene 4
- self deprecating
- duped by disguise
- AO3: Shakespeare was younger than his wife. it was believed that men should be older due to dominance
“Women are as roses, whose fair flower, being once displayed, doth fall that very hour”
Act 2 Scene 4
- simile
- suggests women are only beautiful for a brief time
- reference to virginity
- lexical set of flowers
- rhyming couplets
- In Elizabethan era chastity was prized and equated with purity. Once women had sex, their value supposedly diminished.
“They lack retention”
Act 2 Scene 4
- suggesting women don’t have the capacity to love
- ironic as he is driven by love
“One face, one voice, one habit and two persons!”
Act 5 Scene 1
- repetition
- exclamatory
“That live in her; when liver, brain, and heart”
Act 1 Scene 1
- metaphor
- anatomical imagery
- desire, reason and emotion
- Orsino hopes the three forces will bring Olivia to him - desperate
“Away before me to sweet beds of flowers! Love thoughts lie rich when canopied with bowers”
Act 1 Scene 1
- rhyming couplet
- admires Olivia’s sensitivity
- suggesting he will go to sleep and dream about Olivia
“Here comes the Countess; now heaven walks on earth!”
Act 5 Scene 1
- metaphor
- personifying her as chastity of beauty
“What, to perverseness? You uncivil lady, to whose ingrate and unauspicious altars
My soul the faithfull’st offerings have breathed out that e’er devotion tendered! What shall I do?”
Act 5 Scene 1
- ‘altar’ suggests he worships Olivia
- Olivia’s flaws are sinful
- committed, ironic as he changes his mind shortly after
- pre modifier
