What does Shakespeare mean by if music be the food of love?
What does Shakespeare mean by if music be the food of love?
The first line of the play Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. The speaker is asking for music because he is frustrated in courtship; he wants an overabundance of love so that he may lose his appetite for it.
Where does the quote if music be the food of love come from?
This lovely phrase comes from one of Shakespeare’s plays titled Twelfth Night. In this play, Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is head over heels in love with the Countess Olivia. However, she’s placed herself into a period of mourning, so Orsino can’t woo her. As a result, Orsino asks for there to be an excess of music.
Who said if music is food of love?
Orsino
‘If music be the food of love, play on. ‘ This is one of the most famous opening sentences in all of English literature, and one of Shakespeare’s most quoted lines. He opens his great comic play, Twelfth Night, with it. Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is in love.
Why does Orsino call music the food of love Why would he want an excess of it?
The lovelorn Orsino is frustrated in his courtship of Countess Olivia. He asks for more music because he muses that an excess of music might cure his obsession with love, in the way that eating too much removes one’s appetite for food.
What did Shakespeare say about music?
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!
What is the role of music in Twelfth Night?
Shakespeare also uses the music and poetry in Twelfth Night to foreshadow what is going to happen for the rest of the performance and to reveal major themes in the play. Music and poetry become major characters in the play themselves.
Who says if music be the food of love plays in Twelfth Night?
The play’s opening speech includes one of its most famous lines, as the unhappy, lovesick Orsino tells his servants and musicians, “If music be the food of love, play on.” In the speech that follows, Orsino asks for the musicians to give him so much musical love-food that he will overdose (“surfeit”) and cease to …
What does Feste’s song mean?
Into each life, as Longfellow reminded us, some rain must fall. And ‘the rain it raineth every day’ might be interpreted in this song as a reminder of the fact that every day we are faced with trials and hardships, things which inconvenience us or dampen our spirits, rain on our parade.
Who invented English words?
William Shakespeare is credited with the invention or introduction of over 1,700 words that are still used in English today. William Shakespeare used more than 20,000 words in his plays and poems, and his works provide the first recorded use of over 1,700 words in the English language.
