The comedy begins with a topic well known to Renaissance audiences: unrequited love. Orsino, the Duke of Illyria, is in love with the Countess Olivia; but she does not love him. So, Orsino is feeling listless and blue. He is depressed and cannot find satisfaction in anything. The reader should also note that although the name Illyria does suggest a real location, Shakespeare’s Illyria is actually more imaginary, a far-away place that existed once upon a time. Orsino is the ruler of Illyria, but his mind is on affairs of the heart rather than on affairs of state.
The scene opens with Orsino sitting languidly in his palace and listening to one of his servants play music. Orsino is hoping that the music will distract him from thinking about Olivia:
If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die. (1-3)
Orsino begins with the metaphorical idea that music is the food of love. When lovers listen to music, their feelings of love increase. Orsino is hoping that he will become too full of love. Like a hungry man who eats so much that he no longer desires food, Orsino is hoping that his appetite for love – his desire for Olivia – will end. The common depiction of an unrequited lover during the Renaissance is someone who cannot eat or sleep or function in any normal or rational way. The unrequited lover thus experiences a type of madness. Orsino no longer wishes to be mad, but he cannot help himself.
Orsino quickly finds the music to be unsatisfactory. His desire for Olivia has not ended. Orsino asserts that the last strain of music (the last series of musical notes) has a “dying fall” (line 4). Literally, he is suggesting that the music ends with a sequence that descends or becomes lower. But metaphorically Orsino is indicating that (1) the music has a dead or null effect on him and that (2) he still feels like he is dying – dying for the love of Olivia.
Orsino orders his musician to stop playing (at line 7) and then launches into a philosophical comment about the spirit of love (beginning at line 9). People, especially young people, fall in love quickly and easily. Shakespeare uses the simile “as the sea” to describe love (line 11). Falling in love is like falling into the ocean. It overwhelms the lover. And this ocean or sea can even overwhelm – or drown – someone who has a high rank and great abilities (“validity and pitch”). Neither the ocean nor love discriminates. It treats everybody equally. Even someone as high-ranking as the Duke of Illyria becomes overwhelmed and powerless (worthless: “low price”) when he falls into the sea of love. His high rank does not help him keep his head above the water. The unrequited lover is like a drowning man, helpless and hopeless.
Orsino concludes his philosophical comment with the following:
So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical. (14-15)
The word fancy here could be used to indicate either imagination or love. Orsino’s feelings of love are causing him to be imaginative and metaphorical. Orsino realizes that he is not being a realist; he is not seeing life from a realistic or rational perspective. Orsino is an obsessed lover.
When Orsino’s servant then suggests that Orsino should go out hunting a deer or hart to take his mind away from his troubles, the imaginative Orsino quickly thinks that he would rather go out hunting the heart (that is, the heart of Olivia). And the Duke’s imagination then causes him to think of the mythological tale of Actaeon, a hunter who one day came across the goddess Diana bathing naked in a pond. Actaeon cannot stop staring at the beauty of the goddess, but Diana becomes enraged and magically transforms Actaeon into a deer or stag. Actaeon’s own hunting dogs then chase him, kill him, and rip him to pieces.
Orsino compares his situation to Actaeon’s. Olivia is like the goddess Diana. And, in this extended metaphor, Orsino’s desires of love become the hunting dogs. Orsino feels that his own desires are ripping him apart. Being an unrequited lover is painful and agonizing.