In many stories throughout history, love is exemplified in many different ways and not all of them include a man and woman living happily ever after. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night offers a variety of types of love, which includes true love, self-love and infatuation. By the end, it is shown that Viola finds true love with Malvolio loves himself, and Sir Toby and Olivia are not in love, but instead are infatuated with their significant others.
Throughout the play, Viola is the only character that makes a strong case for true love. She was loyal to Orsino and selfless, and those traits only belong to someone who was truly in love, “I’ll do my best to woo your lady. Yet a barful strife! Whoe’er I woo, myself would be his wife.” (1.4. 40-42) Even after learning that Orsino was in love with Olivia, Viola did not give up on her own love for the Duke but instead suppressed her emotions and did what should could to help Orsino try to find happiness with Olivia. By pretending to be a man named Cesario, Viola started to share a friendship with Orsino. Once she revealed her true identity as a woman, the transition to becoming husband and wife was made easier and Viola finally got the true love she had been longing for.
The love that Malvolio portrays in Twelfth Night is that of self-love. Malvolio proves himself to be a bit egotistical. He automatically assumes that Olivia is in love with him after reading a letter that was actually written by Maria and left out for him to find. Many people with inflated egos tend to go into denial when they are wrong, and that is exactly what Malvolio did. He was so confident that it was Olivia who wrote him a letter that included instructions to do things such as wear cross gartered yellow stockings. Olivia actually hated those, but being in denial, Malvolio twisted her actual feelings around to make it seem like she loved the garment, “my lady loves me. She did commend my yellow stockings of late, she did praise my leg being...