Food
Food imagery abounds in Twelfth Night, as it is often used a figurative representation for love and desire. Orsino asks at the very beginning of the play to be so full of the "food of love" (music) that he becomes sick and loses his appetite altogether. Indeed, the play often equates food and indulgence with the powerful feeling of desire, which forces lovers into a state where they are constantly seeking satiety.
Costumes
Of course, Viola's disguise as Cesario inspires a number of characters (namely Orsino and Olivia) to rethink their ideas of sexual attraction, as Viola appears as a rather androgynous page boy. When Malvolio is tricked into wearing an elaborately embarrassing outfit complete with yellow stockings, his outfit becomes a symbol of his impossible social ambition as he hopes to achieve a higher social status by marrying Olivia. Costumes and disguises are important images throughout the play, as they hint at discrepancies between outward appearance and inward intent.
The Sea
Throughout the play, characters invoke images of the sea as a figurative way of describing love. Like the ocean, love is powerful, vast, unpredictable, wonderful, and at times dangerous. These images also hint at the play's interest in fluidity more generally: Viola's disguise challenges traditional notions of gender and sexuality by making androgyny the source of both male and female attraction.
The Hunt
The play also relies on images of hunting and pursuit in order to convey different characters' perceptions of love. Traditionally, love was often described in early modern English poetry as a hunter (usually a man) pursuing a deer, or hart (usually female). Nowhere is this more readily observed than in Sir Thomas Wyatt's sixteenth-century poem, "Whoso List to Hunt," in which the speaker remarks on the elusiveness of a deer (his beloved). Of course, Twelfth Night intervenes in this conventional model by showcasing a reversal of gender roles, both through Viola's disguise as Cesario and through unexpected behavior like Olivia's proposal to Sebastian.
