Twelfth night

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, naught enters there,
Of what validity and pitch so e’er,
But falls into abatement and low price
Even in a minute! So full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical. 

The play’s opening speech includes one of its most famous lines, as the unhappy,
lovesick Orsino tells his servants and musicians, “If music be the food of love, play on.”
In the speech that follows, Orsino asks for the musicians to give him so much musical
love-food that he will overdose (“surfeit”) and cease to desire love any longer. Through
these words, Shakespeare introduces the image of love as something unwanted,
something that comes upon people unexpectedly and that is not easily avoided. But this
image is complicated by Orsino’s comment about the relationship between romance
and imagination: “So full of shapes is fancy / That it alone is high fantastical,” he says,
relating the idea of overpowering love (“fancy”) to that of imagination (that which is
“fantastical”). Through this connection, the play raises the question of whether romantic
love has more to do with the reality of the person who is loved or with the lover’s own
imagination. For Orsino and Olivia, both of whom are willing to switch lovers at a
moment’s notice, imagination often seems more powerful than reality.
Hamlet
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.”

By using stars, the sun, and truth as examples of fixed things that most people already
believe are constant, Hamlet deftly urges Ophelia to doubt them so as to emphasize that his
love is something she could never doubt. In this way the playwright not only demonstrates
the love Hamlet has for Ophelia, but he is also offering a clue: that Hamlet is indeed sane
and able to use logic, in spite of the erratic behavior he has been, and will be, displaying.
Throughout the play Hamlet’s state of mind is in question as he seems sane one moment
and insane the next. This is a plot device meant to confound the other characters as well as
the audience. It is meant to bring to question whether he has lost his senses as he grieves for
his father, or if he is intentionally creating confusion so that the truth will come to light that
his father, the king, was indeed murdered so that his uncle could seize his throne (and his
wife).

Hamlet is telling Ophelia not to doubt that he loves her, in the strongest terms this
tormented youth can summon up --saying that even if she questions what was generally
taken to be true in their time, about some of the most powerful forces in the universe, that
the stars are made of fire, and that the sun moves, and if she goes beyond that to question
that there is even such a thing as truth, still she should never doubt Hamlet's love for her --
quite ironic, as things turn out (even though he ends the letter to Ophelia with "but that I
love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu.")