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Read the opening lines of Twelfth Night. How do these lines introduce the audience to the theme of love, including the ways in which love can cause pain?

DUKE: If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.
That strain again, it had a dying fall.
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour. Enough, no more,
’Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
[Music ceases]
O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch so e’er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

It describes love as a flowers sweet smell and it makes music be the food of love. They want more music so that love may go on. But when the odor does not smell sweet the love is now over.

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upman48884 upman48884 · Answer 2 · 2018-08-30T19:47:13+02:00

Orsino, the lovesick duke of Illyria, speaks these lines. He introduces the audience to the theme of love as overpowering and fickle. He calls sweet music the "food of love" and wants "an excess of it" so that he can satisfy his appetite for it. However, when the music is no longer sweet, Orsino compares it to the sea. Like the sea, it engulfs everything and debases its value to a "low price." He concludes that love can change from sweet music to an engulfing sea in a matter of one minute. He also suggests that it shifts shape at whim. The fickleness of love reflects Orsino’s own inconstant nature, casting him as self-indulgent and melodramatic. Finally, because Orsino never names the object of his love in these opening lines, the emotional outpouring indicates that Orsino is consumed more by the idea of love than by love for Olivia.