Philip Weller caricature
Philip and Weller hugging

Welcome to my web site, now under development for more than twenty years.   
-- Philip Weller, November 13, 1941 - February 1, 2021
Dr. Weller, an Eastern Washington University professor of English and Shakespearean scholar for more than 50 years.


Return
to
Twelfth Night,
Act 1, Scene 1, line 3.

Note to Twelfth Night, 1.1.3, "The appetite may sicken, and so die"

Orsino, worried about his deep infatuation, is trying stifle his own appetite for love. A consort (small band) is playing romantic music, and in Orsino's first sentence—hopelessly in love with Olivia—he asks the musicians to play on so that he'll have so much of the "food of love" that love's appetite for music and his appetite for love will die. Orsino's like a person who decides he needs to kill his love of chocolate and starts by asking for a ten-pound box.

If music be the food of love, play on
The Concert by Gerrit van Honthorst, 1623