Twelfth Night Research Paper

Do you believe in love at first sight? To define this phenomenon, it is the sudden solid feeling that a person is meant to be with you as a partner for life upon your initial sighting of them. While this may be claimed by many couples, love is most often cultivated in moments where a person finds - and may be surprised by - themselves acting and/or changing oneself drastically in favor of the other party. Whether it be a change of appearance or the disobeyment of rules, this sultry, insidious creature has the power to alter a life path. In this study, Shakespeare’s moments of sudden love will be examined in both art and science.

Shakespeare has depicted the unyielding pain of longing for or losing love, and its unpredictable nature through his writing. Let us take his masterpiece of Twelfth Night where Olivia is sought after by Duke Orsino who is in pains for her love. But alas, Olivia has vowed to sworn off men as loving tribute to her dead brother and Orsino sends Viola to profess his love to Olivia. Enter the unpredictability of this emotion of love
An anthropologist and human behavior researcher, Helen E. Fisher, has studied the 3 stages of developing a relationship. Stage 1 is Lust - which is driven by our sex hormones called testosterone and estrogen - is a survival stage to stimulate the need for sexual activity for nature to reproduce. Attraction is brought about at Stage 2 where a variety of environmental factors make you gravitate towards a certain mate but then 3 neurotransmitters affect the brain to show the symptoms that romantic comedies often showcase. Dopamine is the first culprit which creates a flood of the reward response in the brain. For example it has been proven that the intake of cocaine activates the dopamine pleasure receptor which may be why love is associated with it being a