Twelfth Night Melancholy Quotes

If music be the food of love, play on - William Shakespeare In Excess

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!

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. The soliloquy by lovesick Orsino, Duke of Illyria, forms the opening lines of Twelfth Night. The first line is one of the most famous in the play and one of Shakespeare’s most quoted. Orsino is so maddened with desire and love for the Lady Olivia, who does not reciprocate his passions, that it makes him sick and melancholic. He instructs his musicians to play him so much musical love-food that he overdoses and no longer desires love.

O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first,
Methought she purged the air of pestilence.
That instant was I turned into a hart,
And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds,
E’er since pursue me.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. Orsino makes no secret of the fact that he is obsessed with the beautiful Olivia, and the only thing he wants it to be with her. Describing how he first fell in love, he compares himself to a deer being hunted by hounds. His unrequieted desire is bringing him much pain, sadness and not a little madness.

So please my lord, I might not be admitted,
But from her handmaid do return this answer:
The element itself, till seven years’ heat,
Shall not behold her face at ample view,
But like a cloistress she will veiled walk,
And water once a day her chamber round
With eye-offending brine – all this to season
A brother’s dead love, which she would keep fresh
And lasting in her sad remembrance.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1. Valentine reports to Orsino that a melancholic Olivia is shunning the outside world for the next seven years and hiding her face in a dark veil, to honor her love for her dead brother. So she is not interested in Orsino.

My stars shine darkly over me.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 1. Sebastian explains to Antonio why he doesn’t want him to go with him. Following his shipwreck and loss of his twin sister Viola he feels he is cursed. As Sebastian likes Antonio, who has cared for him after his bad fortune, he doesn’t want bad things to happen him. In an ironical way, this quote foreshadows what later happens to Sebastian – he is blessed with good fortune when he is mistaken for Cesario by Olivia.

Come away, come away, death,
And in sad cypress let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Feste the fool sings one of the most depressing love songs in Shakespeare for Orsino and Cesario (Viola). It is about a lover who dies of a broken heart, pining for his uncaring love. The song has particular meaning for Orsino and Viola. It could also be mocking Orsino and his desperate over-the-top passion for Olivia.

Now, the melancholy god protect thee; and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Feste sings a song to Orsino, asking the Roman god Saturn – who ruled melancholy – to protect him. He suggests Orsino is moody and fickle with the mind of an opal, constantly changing. This foreshadows that Orsino will later switch his love from Olivia to Viola. Foreshadowed also in the scene are the two kinds of desire we find in Twelfth Night, the constant faithful love (Viola’s) and the fickle one that switches from one to another (Orsino’s).

DUKE: And what’s her history?
VIOLA: A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,
Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 4. Viola (disguised as Cesario) tells Orsino the story of her father’s daughter who had a secret love. Of course the daughter is actually Viola and the secret love is Orsino.

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.
But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain it raineth every day.

– William Shakespeare

Twelfth Night, Act 5, Scene 1. Song sung by Feste, the Fool. The opening verses of the song with which Feste ends the play. He sings of knaves and thieves and foolish things, echoing the themes of deception and foolishness that dominate the play. But there is something melancholic in what he sings, as against the backdrop of life’s fun and foolishness, there is his warning of the rain that “raineth every day.”
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