Orsino and Viola, by Frederick Pickersgill.
Orsino, Duke of Illyria, and Viola (Cesario), painted by English artist, illustrator and early photographer Frederick Richard Pickersgill (1820-1900). ‘Illyrians’ was a term from classical antiquity used of various tribes of the eastern shore of the Adriatic, nowadays stretching from Croatia in the north down to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania.
“MY father had a daughter lov’d a
man,
As it might be perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.”
“And what’s her history?”
“A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i’ th’ bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pin’d in thought;
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will; for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love.”
“But died thy sister of her love, my boy?”
“I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
And all the brothers too - and yet I know not.*
Sir, shall I to this lady?”
“Ay, that’s the theme.
To her in haste. Give her this jewel; say
My love can give no place, bide no denay.”
Viola may be indicating that she does not yet know whether this heroine will die of her love; alternatively, she may mean that she is not sure if she really is ‘all the brothers of her father’s house’: Viola fears her identical twin brother Sebastian may have drowned in the same shipwreck that left her in Illyria, though she has heard a rumour that he survived.
Précis
In William Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’, Viola, posing as a male servant, tries to tell her master Orsino, Duke of Illyria, that his infatuation with Olivia is blinding him to a love much closer to home. However, Viola’s disguise is too good, and Olivia’s place in the Duke’s heart too strong, for him to understand. (54 / 60 words)
