Discuss Twelfth Night as a satire on the idea of love at first sight.ANSWER

Very interesting question. Of course, you need to remember
that this play is all about characters falling strangely, suddenly and inexplicably in
love with other people - often apparently against their better judgement in a way that
drives them to folly or absurdity. Just consider the way that "love at first sight" is
introduced by the love-sick Orsino:

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O, when mine eyes did see Olivia
first,

Methought she purged the air of
pestilence.

That instant was I turned into a
hart,

And my desires, like fell and cruel
hounds,

E'er since pursue
me.

Note similarly what
Olivia says when she falls in love with Caesario:

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Even so quickly may one catch the
plague?

Methinks I feel this youth's
perfections

With an invisible and subtle
stealth

To creep in at mine
eyes.

What is interesting in
both of these quotes is how love is described. Orsino describes his sudden love for
Olivia in a very violent manner - he becomes subject to his desires, so much that they
constantly haunt and dominate him. The metaphor of the pack of dogs hunting the deer
(the "hart") suggests that there is something out of control in his love - just as a
pack of dogs when they have the scent go crazy and pursue their quarry, so we see a
love-stricken Orsino in Act I scene i, who is mastered by his emotions and out of
control. Similarly Olivia describes her "love" as something insidious, "creeping" and
overpowering. She is not able to control her response but describes what is happening to
her in terms that relate love to a thief or an assassin that creeps up on us with
"invisible and subtle stealth" to overpower us.

Both these
metaphors stress how love comes upon us like a "plague" or a "sickness" as it is
described by other characters. We have no control over it and it just happens to us,
seemingly apart from any conscious choice of our own. Thus love at first sight is a
central theme of the play, but it speaks more of infatuation, of how dangerous it can
be, and how it can rule us, and and how it can cause us to make fools of ourselves in
the name of "love".