If music be the food of love, play on

Duke Orsino is in love with being in love. He's so hopelessly in love with it that he opines as he opens the play with his famous speech. It waxes with as apt a metaphor as any for that most coveted of emotional states, comparing love to plant life that must be fed--almost Audrey II-like--with so much nourishing music that it would rather die of being gorged than go without.

At the start of Twelfth Night, the Duke adores countess Olivia so much that he likens himself to a hart in the wood, passively and happily pursued by the "cruel hounds" of his desires. He lies back, awaiting Valentine, the messenger, to give him word of his beloved's condition. Unfortunately, she is so overwhelmed with grief over her brother's death that she swears to cloister herself in her chamber for seven years. Orsino, understanding and even exalting the depth of her passion expressed thusly, imagines how orgasmic things will be when she comes out of her funk and decides to focus all her affections on Orsino himself. 

For the Duke, the melancholy associated with spurned love is as exciting as love itself and he wallows in it for his own appetite's sake. He can't even get off his ass to woo this sad Olivia; he sends messengers--and even the cross-dressed Viola (calling herself Cesario)--to woo Olivia in his stead. He's so obsessed with being rejected and being in sickly sweet despair that he doesn't even notice that his boy Cesario is actually a woman who has fallen in love with him. Needless to say, all is well in the end, just as soon as the breeches and yellow cross-garters are set aside and everyone reveals their true selves.

Orsino would LOVE fandom culture if he were around today. Set him in front of a Netflix-connected TV and put on Downton Abbey or Sherlock or Doctor Who and he'll likely swoon with all the unrequited romances before him. Give him an iPad with fanfiction on it, and he'll definitely implode... or start a tumblr blog. Because being in a serious fandom is much like standing in a packed theatre watching a stirring play--they both give us an intimately shared emotional joyride. Smiles or tears, the feels alone are high fantastical.

Twelfth Night, Act I, Sc. I

Duke Orsino: 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.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.