<\/wbr>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 5<\/p>\nThat breathes upon a bank of violets,<\/p>\n
Stealing and giving odor.<\/p>\n
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This is Duke Orsino\u2014basically he\u2019s saying, music stirs feelings of romantic love, and because love is unsatisfying and even tormenting, play music so as to give me emotional excess, so that I\u2019ll get so sick of it, and the emotions will die. In other words, he loves the feelings in a way, but also is sick of them\u2014they are both pleasurable and painful. Then he says:<\/p>\n
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Enough; no more. [this is about the music}<\/p>\n
\u2019Tis not so sweet now as it was before.<\/p>\n
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[Then he comments on the \u201cspirit of love\u201d and how it devours everything in its path. . . . and then finally he says:]<\/p>\n
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So full of shapes is fancy<\/p>\n
That it alone is high fantastical.<\/p>\n
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\u201cFancy\u201d is a word that meant both love and imagination; basically he says that love is the most imaginative thing in the world\u2014which sounds great unless you realize that what he is saying is that love is especially good at creating imaginary things that are not really there. In other words, along with many other uses, it can be an instrument for self-deception.<\/p>\n
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We soon learn that his love for Olivia is just this sort of imaginary love: she doesn\u2019t care for him, and he is more in love with an imaginary version of her\u2014or even with his own feelings\u2014than with her herself.<\/p>\n
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(b) But Olivia turns out to have the same problem: She has vowed not to love because she is mourning for her brother. But Orsino sends Viola as a messenger to carry his message of pining love to Olivia. (Remember that Viola is dressed as a man.)<\/p>\n
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Viola does a good job (though it\u2019s done with humor too\u2014after she gives her first speech, she says to Olivia in effect: are you really Olivia, because if you\u2019re not, I don\u2019t want to waste my speech on you. Notice again that the speech is first given without knowing whether it\u2019s being directed to the right person: there\u2019s a disconnect between love and the reality of the person who is supposedly loved.)<\/p>\n
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Anyway, Olivia \u2013 contrary to her vow not to love \u2013 falls in love with Viola, thinking her to be a man. Again, this is a kind of imaginary love that has little to do with the person in front of her:<\/p>\n
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This self-deception about love leads to all sorts of confusion, much of it very funny: but eventually Olivia does get married \u2013 not to Viola, but to someone who looks just like her, or almost just like her. (Spoiler alert.) The point is that Olivia\u2019s love was never for an actual person, but for an appearance: we can only hope that a truer, deeper kind of love can blossom at some point.<\/p>\n
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(c) Let\u2019s go to another example: I mentioned Malvolio, Olivia\u2019s steward. He seems to be stern and self-denying. But he too is susceptible to love, at least love of this emotional, imaginary variety that has little to do with the actual person.<\/p>\n
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Sir Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek (you may remember) don\u2019t care for Malvolio, so they (along with one of Olivia\u2019s servants named Maria) cook up a scheme to make Malvolio think that Olivia is in love with him. He falls for the scheme with an ease that makes it obvious he really wants to believe it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n
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In fact at one point he takes a cryptic line from the letter Olivia has supposedly written (MOAI doth sway my life) and tries to make it fit himself: \u201cThis simulation is not as the former, and yet to crush this a little, it would bow to me, for every one of these letters are in my name.\u201d<\/p>\n
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You\u2019ll see what he does in response to the letter. (It\u2019s really funny.)<\/p>\n
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Shakespeare is using Malvolio to show the dangers of self-deception \u2013 in this case, self-deception that springs from ego and a craving to be love\u2014and Shakespeare is maybe also having us enjoy seeing Malvolio get fooled and punished.<\/p>\n
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But pay attention \u2013 and I think you\u2019ll see that the play suggests the joke on Malvolio goes too far and ends up being cruel. Olivia expresses her sympathy for Malvolio and the value she puts on his work as her steward. She even says, \u201cHe hath been most notoriously abused.\u201d<\/p>\n
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(d) One final example, which actually involves Duke Orsino again. Remember that Viola is working for him \u2013 but dressed as a man. In other words, Orsino literally does not see who is really in front of him\u2014or doesn\u2019t see some important things about her, especially that she is a woman.<\/p>\n
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That results in some interesting and humorous tension as Viola pretty clearly falls in love with Orsino, and as Orsino continues to be oblivious to her interest in him. They have fascinating discussions about the nature of love, and about the nature of men and women \u2013 with the main result being (in my opinion) that we see that Orsino still has a lot to learn on both subjects.<\/p>\n
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But what makes their relationship really compelling, I think, is that it maybe shows us something about what really should be the foundation of love, including romantic love<\/p>\n
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Not a pleasurably painful indulgence in emotion<\/p>\n
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Not merely physically attraction<\/p>\n
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And certainly not falling in love with an imaginary version of the other person<\/p>\n
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But something like . . . I don\u2019t know . . . friendship?<\/p>\n
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It appears that Viola and Orsino actually come to have an appreciation for each other, partly, or even mainly, because Orsino doesn\u2019t know that she\u2019s a woman. (With women he seems unable to respond with anything but emotional and imaginative self-indulence.) Rather than indulging in imaginary love, Orsino sees her as a companion and a friend. And so when he finally finds out she\u2019s a woman, it\u2019s as if he realizes . . .<\/p>\n
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Wow, I could actually be in love with somebody I know and like.<\/p>\n
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The closing lines of the play are interesting: Orsino says to Viola that, once she has changed into women\u2019s clothing, she will be \u201cOrsino\u2019s mistress and his fancy\u2019s queen.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The meaning of that line may not be entirely clear because we don\u2019t use \u201cmistress\u201d or \u201cfancy\u201d in the same way. \u201cMistress\u201d here means \u201cruler\u201d (as the feminine version of \u201cmaster\u201d): In other words, I will be your servant and will be ruled by you. And \u201cfancy\u201d (remember) means love but also imagination: so rather than \u201cfancy\u201d being in charge (as it was in Orsino\u2019s first speech), now the other person (Viola) will be the queen, the ruler, of his \u201cfancy,\u201d his emotions and his imagination, rather than the other way around.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s at least a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
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(4) One last thing I\u2019d like to do with the theme if there\u2019s time:<\/p>\n
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The reunion of Viola and her brother (Sebastian) is interesting because they are twins, and neither thinks the other is alive: so it\u2019s as if they are resurrected to each other. But they also wonder if the other person is real, or if the other person is just a projection or mirror image of themselves. (The phenomenon of twins raises interesting questions about identity: who am I if there is someone else who looks like me.)<\/p>\n
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They go through quite a process to determine: are you real?<\/p>\n
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They want to make sure the other person is really other, is really someone else, and that they\u2019re seeing them for who they really are.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s one more comment on the question: Do you see what is right in front of you? Do you really see the other person?<\/p>\n
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As I noted, It also raises questions about identity: Am I really the person I think I am? And that in turn leads to questions about diversity. When I see people who are obviously different from me\u2014in gender, race, or physical appearance\u2014am I so\u00a0blinded by appearance and by stereotypes that I can\u2019t see the person who is in front of me? When it comes to political and religious differences, am I so sure what the other people or groups of people are like\u00a0that I don\u2019t see who they really are?<\/p>\n
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(6) Let me close with some more lines from C. S. Lewis: When his wife died he worried that he would sink back into his self-involvement and self-deception, and he cried out: \u201cOh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature [meaning himself] out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back\u2014to be sucked back\u2014into it?\u201d (19) He was afraid of sinking back into an isolated, self-involved world.<\/p>\n
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In addition, he didn\u2019t want to fall in love with his memory of his wife, with \u201can image in [his] own mind\u201d (20).<\/p>\n
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Just as he wanted to truly love God\u2014not just his idea of God\u2014so he wanted his relationship with his wife to be \u201cNot [with] my idea of [her], but [with] her. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbor, but my neighbor. For don\u2019t we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive\u2014who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture\u2014almost the precis<\/em> [that is, the abstract or summary]\u2014[that] we\u2019ve made of him in our own minds? . . .\u201d (67).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
How do we avoid that? How do we actually relate to the person who is in front of us? I guess I\u2019d say that that is the task of a lifetime.<\/p>\n
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As my favorite philosopher (Emmanuel Levinas) put is, we need to welcome the Other (the other person), even when that disturbs our comfort or our complacency. We need to \u201cwelcome [the other person\u2019s] expression, in which at each instant [they overflow] the idea a thought [our thought] would carry away from [their expression].\u201d We need to be open to \u201cThe way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in me<\/em>.\u201d We need to be ready to be taught\u2014to learn something we didn\u2019t think we knew.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
The production tonight<\/span><\/span> may challenge you in some ways\u2014challenge some of your preconceptions about race or gender or who knows what else. In the spirit of this theme I\u2019ve been talking about (Do you see what\u2019s right in front of you?) I would suggest just being open, ready to experience what you see without trying to package it and label it. If we can do that, we might actually learn something.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>DO YOU SEE?<\/p>\n