Love Letter Lunacy: Difference between revisions

* In ''[[Twelfth Night]]'', several characters decide to bring Malvolio down a peg and write a fake love letter to him from their mistress. Because he is a prideful fool, he immediately falls for it and believes Olivia is infatuated with him. When he follows the ridiculous instructions left for him in the note, Olivia thinks he's gone mad and has him locked up as a lunatic.

* ''[[Cyrano De Bergerac]]'': This trope is a plot point in the play. At Act II, Cyrano, [[The Grotesque|a man with a ridiculous long nose]], [[The Ace|loves beautiful and eloquent Roxane]], [[Cannot Spit It Out|but is utterly afraid of her reject]]. So he writes a love letter to her, [[Dirty Coward|hoping to give it to her and run]]. When Cyrano discovers Roxane [[Love At First Sight|is interested]] in [[Brainless Beauty|fair but ineloquent Christian]], he realizes that Roxane will be disillusioned with Christian and [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy|he cannot let that happen]]. So [[Playing Cyrano|he proposes to Christian teach him to be eloquent, and lends him the love letter he wrote to Roxane to Christian so he can send it to her in his own name]]. At Act III, -Cyrano realizes that the [[Witty Banter|eloquence]] [[Fan Dumb|Roxane]] [[Serious Business|admires so highly is]] shallow and decides to speak of his real feelings in the letters he keeps sending her in Christian’s name, from the Battlefield, risking his life, twice a day. The whole point is that these new love letters are so powerful in expressing ---Cyrano’s love to Roxane, that Roxane evolves from a self – admitted [[Shallow Love Interest]] into a [[Guile Hero|full fleshed heroine]] decided to save Christian from peril in Act IV.

''(He takes up the pen):'' Go to, I will write it, that love-letter! Oh! I have writ it and rewrit it in my own mind so oft that it lies there ready for pen and ink; and if I lay but my soul by my letter-sheet, 'tis naught to do but to copy from it. }}