"Twelfth Night": Are the Characters happy?

While Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy and everything does end well for all the characters with everyone falling in love with each other, throughout the play everyone seems to suffer as a result of their love sick condition.  In this play, Shakespeare seems to be showing that love causes pain.  Many of the characters commonly express love as a kind of curse, and express how painful it is to be trapped in a love like state.  For instance Olivia describes love as a "plague" from which she suffers terribly (I.v line 265).  Another example is that Orsino sees love as doleful and compares it to an "appetite" that he wants to satisfy and cannot (I.i. line 21).  In these examples it is clear that the characters in twelfth night are left in a state of love-sickness and they percieve it as if they are being punished by some cosmic force in the universe.  Being in this state, and wanting to satisfy their love appetite leads to desperation in many characters.  Viola, who is one of the less melodramatic characters in the play even suffers from this desperation which is shown in the quote "My state is desperate for my master's love" (II.ii line 35). Being in this suffering state causes the character to loose control of their emotions, and even causes some to become violent even thou they didn't show any signs of being violent even thou there was no signs of violence being one of their characteristics at the start of the play.  For example, Orsino in Act V.i threatens to kill Cesario because he beilieves he has forsaken him by thinking he has become Olivia's lover.

However, even my conclusion above that the characters at least end up happy in the end of the play is not completely correct.  Some character do not in fact achieve romantic happiness.  For example, Malvolio and Antonio are prevented from fulfilling their romantic desires.  Throughout the play Malvolio tried pursue Olivia is disappointed that he had been tricked into thinking Olivia had liked him and is left feeling like a fool and even unworthy.  More controversially, Antonio (who had shown some signs of attraction to Sebastian in the play) can not fulfill his desires due to social norms.

So why did Shakespeare not make a happy ending for everyone and why did he cause so much suffering in his characters up till the end?  I think it is because he is trying to show that love cannot conquer all obstacles and is not guaranteed to happen.  In a way he was taking a more realistic approach to show that not everything works out as you had hoped and in fact you may be left feeling like a fool.  He also shows the harsh reality that those who do not have their romantic desires fulfilled still remain in love and are left in a worse case of suffering because they then know that it can never be fulfilled.   Thus, Shakespeare is showing that falling in love is not always a good thing and can lead to much suffering.  This is clearly one of Shakespeare's more cynical plays concerning love.