Soliloquy 1.5 277-287

"What is your parentage?"
"Above my fortunes, yet my state is well.
I am a gentleman." I'll be sworn though art.
Thy tongue, thy limbs, thy actions, and spirit
Do give thee five-fold blazon. Not too fast. soft, soft--
Unless the master were the man. How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
Methinks I feel this youth's perfections
With an invisible and subtle stealth
To creep in at mine eyes. Well, let it be.
What ho, Malvio.

Like all of Shakespeare's writing, whether sonnet or play, this soliloquy shows off his talent in using literary devices. Like a poem, it is written with one subject and is displayed in freeverse. Within the lines Shakespeare utilzes enjambment, blazon, and some alliteration to bring the main point of the soliloquy, which also happens to be a huge event in the plot into view. Thus, the reason Shakespeare made Olivia's speech a soliloquy.

This soliloquy is basically about Olivia's realization that she is falling in love with the disguised Viola. After having a sarcastic and witty coversation with the cross-dresser, Olivia begins to ponder her attraction to the "man/boy." To point out the attributes of Viola that Olivia feels most attracted to, she lists them in a blazon: "Thy tongue, thy face, thy limbs, actions, and spirit..." (line 280). She sees him as a gentleman and we also notice that she is talking like a smitten woman. Lines 284 - 286 have enjambment in them to make each point that they make stand out. Olivia calls attention to the fact that she finds perfection in Viola (284) and on the next line she mentions that this vision is "subtle stealth" (notice the alliteration pointing out this pair of words as well). Finally line 286 ends the sentence with this vision of perfection and admiration finds way into her sight. Looking at these three lines, we know that Viola is falling in love. In line 283, she refers to love as "the plague." It is a metaphor that compares love to something that is easy to catch, hard to get rid of, and usually painful. Olivia doesn't particularly seem pleased with the fact that she is falling for Viola considering the metaphor of the plague, and yet she brushes off the event at the end of the poem saying "Well, let it be" (286). Through literary device we are able to understand this character and what is happening in her mind.

This soliloquy is very important to the plot. We learn that Olivia is falling in love with a woman whom she believes to be a man. The rest of the play is based off of this idea that characters are falling in love with those of the hetero sex. That and deceiving personas. Because Olivia is in love with a woman a theme begins to stem. Shakespeare apparently has an opinion about homosexual relationships and attraction because this theme frequently comes up. It seems subtle, however, because the audience can understand that the charcters are only in love with the same sex because they are being deceived. I think Shakespeare really wanted some of these characters together even though it was socially unacceptable. He had to be sly through the disguise of giving other character's disguises. I feel that this theme is largely brought up in Olivia's soliloquy. The fact that she describes her unyielding attraction to Viola at first as a plague and then merely accepts it lightly in the end, really says something about Shakespeare's beliefs and possibly the purpose of the entire play. I think Shakespeare wants us to see that even though this kind of attraction is seen as wrong and shameful, there is a part in humans that can dismiss the negative feelings and just accept it. Just like at the end of the play when all disguises are revealed, characters still get married to the strangers they were fooled by. This strange love is accepted, in a way. Perhaps this kind of plot in a play was Shakespeare's closest way to letting his thoughts on homosexuality get out.