‘If music be the food of love, play on’: (Twelfth Night) These nine words, spoken by the Count Orsino, are among the most famous opening lines in all of Shakespeare. To set the scene: Twelfth Night opens with the Duke of Illyria, Orsino, pining away with love for Olivia, a countess whose father died a year ago and whose brother has recently died. Olivia has vowed to shut herself away from society for seven years as a result of these deaths.
The lines are often interpreted as expressing Orsino’s desire to stop loving (Olivia), but things are not so simple as all that. He’s merely talking of the way that being in love (especially harbouring unrequited love for someone) makes us want to listen to music all day and take solace in it. But love, as the rest of the speech makes clear, can never settle: it’s restless, and constantly moving the mind (and heart) onto some new pursuit. Orsino seems to be aware that he’s got no chance of stopping himself being in love. When you’re struck by Cupid’s arrow, that’s it.
Orsino likens the sound of the music to the sound (of wind) upon a bank of fragrant-smelling violets, carrying their scent away with it. But then he immediately grows tired of this strain of music, and tells the musician to stop playing it, as it’s already lost its allure. The ‘spirit of love’ (‘spirit’ calling back to the idea of the wind breathing) is as hungry as the sea. Everything it takes in, no matter how grand and valuable, becomes debased and devalued because, within a minute, you’re sick of them. Love is the only truly imaginative (‘fantastical’) being in the whole world, because it keeps creating new ‘shapes’ or images (on account of the fact that, as soon as it’s invented one, it grows sick of it and moves on).
So, Orsino’s ‘If music be the food of love’ speech doesn’t so much say ‘I want to stop being in love’ as ‘since I know I cannot stop myself from being in love, all I can do is let myself be carried along on a tide of desires and emotions which are constantly shifting to something else’. Orsino’s love makes him unable to alight on one thing – such as one piece of music – which will allow his mind to be at rest. Love is greedy and consumes everything you throw at it, saying, ‘No, that won’t do: next.’ All you can do is stuff yourself full of music and hope that love is (temporarily) full.
