In Shakespeare's play, Twelfth Night, or What Thou Willest, the characters are involved in a plot full of deception, disguise, and love. Each character is defined not by their gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to play due to the complicated situation at hand. Unlike their gender, the characters' speech provides insight into their true personalities. In Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery, overly dramatic language, lengthy poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his over-emotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches. Duke Orsino's repeated use of poetic verse and poetic devices to describe his romantic misfortunes sets him apart from the other characters. Using deep metaphorical language and fluid poetic structure, Shakespeare conveys Orsino's melodramatic nature. In Orsino's first speech, he takes a complicated, metaphorical approach to explaining his love for Olivia instead of directly expressing his desires. Instead of using prose, Orsino speaks in blank verse, the language of which is significantly more fanciful and floral. He says, “If music be the food of love, keep playing; /Give me an excess, that in excess, /The appetite may fall and die thus” (1.1 3-5) to compare his love for Olivia to his love of music. Orsino wants “excess”, to be able to tire of music and therefore of his love for Olivia. This also shows that he is excessively verbose throughout his speech and often extends his sentences with repetitive phrases such as "..., play on it/give me an excess, that, excess" (1.1.3 -4) and “… can make you sick, and then die” (1.1.5) which have the same meaning. His long language illustrates the dramatic quality...... middle of paper ......ve./For despite the heart of a raven in a dove" (5.1.130-131), to finally summarize his long speech . Orsino uses metaphors to compare the lamb to Viola and the dove to Olivia. Viola is the gentle lamb that Orsino pretends to sacrifice in revenge for Olivia, a deceptively beautiful dove with a dark heart. By using a metaphor to end his speech, Orsino comes out with a more dramatic and profound flair than if he had directly stated his intention to kill Viola. Despite the anger in Act 5's speech, Orsino uses similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, repetition, and flowery language to express his dramatic nature. These techniques often convolute the original meaning of Orsino's words due to the metaphorical structure. However, these are the same traits that set him apart from the other characters in the play and make Orsino memorable to the audience...