Blog Post #2 – In Love? Or In Love With Being In Love?

If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! It had a dying fall;
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! How quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.

—Act I, sc. i

We find out at the end of the scene that Orsino was talking about Lady Olivia, but during the entire monologue we have no clue who he is talking about. We only know that he was speaking of love. So is he heartbroken or is he just, what we would call in modern times, “thirsty”?