Love and Romance at Shakespeare

Shakespeare's reputation as dramatist and poet actor is unique and he is considered by

many to be the greatest playwright of all time, although many of the facts of his life remain
mysterious.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire and was
baptised on 26 April 1564.
Shakespeare's acting career was spent with the Lord Chamberlain's Company, which
was renamed the King's Company in 1603 when James succeeded to the throne.
Shakespeare's poetry was published before his plays, with two poems appearing in 1593 and
1594, dedicated to his patron Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Most of Shakespeare's
sonnets were probably written at this time as well. Records of Shakespeare's plays begin to
appear in 1594, and he produced roughly two a year until around 1611. His earliest plays
include 'Henry VI' and 'Titus Andronicus'. 'A Midsummer Night's Dream', 'The Merchant of
Venice' and 'Richard II' all date from the mid to late 1590s. Some of his most famous
tragedies were written in the early 1600s including 'Hamlet', 'Othello', 'King Lear' and
'Macbeth'. His late plays, often known as the Romances, date from 1608 onwards and include
'The Tempest'.

Introduction
In Shakespeare's plays, love and romance are often treated in ambiguous ways.
Romantic love frequently ends in death, as in the tragedies, but such love may be presented in
an idealized manner, shown to be courageous and unconditional. In Shakespeare's romantic
comedies, the traditional comic ending featuring one or more marriages is often tempered by
a more serious note, which questions the finality of that ending. Additionally, the so-called
"romantic" comedies may feature a certain degree of tension between romantic and
antiromantic elements. Marriage-typically viewed as the goal of romantic love-is also treated
ambiguously by Shakespeare. In many of Shakespeare's comedies and tragedies, marriages
are frequently disrupted by the husband's usually irrational fear of being cuckolded. Despite
the taint on marriage by the specter of cuckoldry or by other subversions, marriage
nevertheless occupies a central role in Shakespeare's work. William Shakespeare used these
devices to present his views about love in his play "A Midsummer Night's Dream."
Shakespeare regards love in a light-hearted manner because his philosophy was that people's
love interests change all the time and that in the end, fate will decide who their mates will be.
Everyone has thought at one time or another that he or she was "in love" with someone. Many
times that "love" has turned out to have been an individual's brief infatuation with another
person.
 Love in Shakespeare
William Shakespeare's glorious pastoral comedy As You Like It favours its
notoriously melancholy character Jaques with this famous and most frequently quoted
soliloquy, “All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players”. It sketches
seven stages of a man's life-infant, school-boy, lover, soldier, justice, pantaloon and second
childhood 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” (As You Like It, Jaques, Act ii,
Scene vii, lines 139-166).This essay deals with the most lovey-dovey, passionate, colourful
and mysterious role of a human being as the lover.
Shakespeare has portrayed love from all angles, encompassing all ages, myths and cultures.
He has looked at love from the traditional lovers' point of view without being oblivious of it,
criticizing it from the viewpoint of a father or a sage. Challenged by the father or society
itself, a lover's usual definition of love should be “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the
mind / And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”( A Midsummer Night's Dream1.1.234-
235).
Later in the same play Lysander tells Hermia, “The course of true love never did run smooth”.
Lovers have their own code of life not bound by space and time.
Lovers live in a world of their own beyond the tantrums of day to day life and feel that
heaven is their final abode. Who but Cleopatra can visualize such an eternal state of bliss
except in the company of Antony, “Eternity was in our lips and eyes / Bliss in our brows'
bent; none our parts so poor / But was a race of heaven”. Does love have any border or does it
transcend all continental boundaries to merge the East with the West, uniting Cleopatra with
Antony? Antony and Cleopatra is the most famous love tragedy of all time. Told that love is
without any boundary, Cleopatra insists on installing a boundary to her love with Antony.
Here is a love-defining dialogue in which Cleopatra says “I'll set a bourn how far to be
beloved.” Antony's witty reply, “Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth,”
giving rise to Joyce Carol Oates's fiction a sweet name New Heaven, New Earth.
Which one of these is true love - showing that one loves another too much or loving too much
but not showing it all? The classic dilemma regarding the definition of true love will always
remain unresolved for many more love stories to be written and scenes enacted in ages still
sleeping in the womb of time. Here is a classic dilemma in the following dialogue about it in
its finest and complete form:
-Julia They do not love that do not show their love.
-Lucetta O, they love least that let men know their love.
Shakespeare is so resourceful that a lover will love to quote him with heart's content and feel
fully satisfied that he could bespeak his heart fully. Here Polonius is reading a letter from
Hamlet to Ophelia, “Doubt thou the stars are fire / Doubt that the sun doth move / Doubt truth
to be a liar / But never doubt I love.” Hamlet becomes sentimental in the grave scene of
Ophelia and shouts out, “I loved Ophelia, forty thousand brothers could not with all their
quantity of love make up my sum.”
Love is expressed here in the most simple terms without any exaggeration or
hyperbole of the above when the Duke says to Isabella, “What's mine is yours, and what's
yours is mine.” Goneril is not true to her heart but the expression if sincere could be a unique
example of true love, “I do love you dearer than: eyesight, space and liberty.” Shakespeare's
observations on love are some of the most beautiful and proverbial in the English language.
Expressions like 'hearts of gold', 'honey of thy breath', 'sweet and honeyed sentences,' 'you
alone are you' surpass any proverb for their depth and sweetness.
Romeo and Juliet is the timeless story of doomed love that has fascinated and delighted
readers for centuries. Juliet was only 13 or exactly two weeks away from her fourteenth
birthday when Romeo fell in love with her at first sight and Juliet requited. She explains
philosophically to her nurse, “My only love sprung from my only hate / Too early seen
unknown, and known too late.” Romeo aptly sums up the typical lovers' psyche,
“Heaven is here where Juliet lives.” Romeo brings out the right condition of love, as how it
begins with sighs for the would-be-beloved, develops through 'comfort and despair' and ends
in sorrow, “Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs / Being purged, a fire sparkling in
lovers' eyes / Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers' tears / What is it else? A madness
most discreet / A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.” He also unwittingly foresees the sea
of pangs leading to their self-immolation, “Is love a tender thing? It is too rough / Too rude,
too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.”
The sonnets are the repository of love with all the connotations and variety to soothe
the hearts of the lovers. Sonnet 116 defines typical love emboldened by loyalty and
steadfastness in any situation, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit
impediments. Love is not love / which alters when it alteration finds / Or bends with the
remover to remove / O no, it is an ever- fixed mark / That looks on tempests and is never
shaken / It is the star to every wandering bark.” In other words, love is tantamount to worship
when Shakespeare urges his Dark Lady in Sonnet 105, “Let not my love be called idolatry”.
How long can lovers sustain being in love? Does it not abate or get cooled too? Hamlet tells
Ophelia, “I did love you once.” Claudius, while referring to love says, “Time qualifies the
spark and fire of it.” Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a remorseful note recalls his love, “I was
adored once too.”
Love is not always applauded in Shakespeare as he looks at it very objectively. “Love is
merely a madness.” Not only that, Shakespeare has a character say “Love is a familiar; Love
is a devil. There is no evil angel but love.”

The Dark Side of Love in Shakespeare's Othello

Shakespeare explores the complexity of human relationships in his tragedy Othello.
In Othello (1603), Shakespeare presents one of his grimmest tragedies. Iago, a bitter and
perhaps jealous soldier bent on destroying his Commander, convinces Othello of his wife’s
infidelity. Othello’s rage escalates until he murders Desdemona and Iago and then takes his
own life in a bleak scene that offers little hope for the lovers’ reunion after death.

The rites of love

Rather than confirming Iago’s views, the entrance of Othello encourages the audience
to dismiss the depiction of Othello’s animalistic and sinister passion. Although Othello
expresses no regret about his elopement with Desdemona, the strength of his love, rather than
his passion, for his new wife is clear: “But that I love the gentle Desdemona, I would not my
unhoused free condition put into circumscription and confine for the seas’ worth.”
This love, according to Othello, seems to have developed from Desdemona’s hero-
worship, as he tells the Duke of Venice, “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I
loved her that she did pity them.” Furthermore, when Desdemona asks the Duke to allow her
to accompany Othello to Cyprus, Othello is quick to point out that he doesn’t want her to
come along for sexual reasons, but rather “to be free and bounteous to her mind.” He even
denies his passion for Desdemona when he says, “The young affects in me defunct,” where
affects refers to passions. In fact, it is Desdemona who seems to be more concerned with the
passionate aspect of her relationship with Othello: “If I be left behind, a moth of peace, and he
go to the war, the rites for why I love him are bereft me.” If we interpret rites as a reference to
marriage rites, then Othello’s rapid assertion of the spiritual nature of his love for Desdemona
after she makes this comment about rites suggests that he may be uncomfortable with her
overt sexuality.
 These Delicate Creatures
Othello’s discomfort with Desdemona’s sexuality may explain, in part, why Iago is
able to convince Othello of Desdemona’s infidelity with such ease. Othello’s reaction to the
possibility that Desdemona has been unfaithful is to first consider why she would stray:
“Haply for I am black and have not those soft parts of conversation that chamberers have, or
for I am declined into the vale of years.” He then curses marriage, because “we can call these
delicate creatures ours, and not their appetites!”, which reveals his fear of what he perceives
to be the uncontrollable nature of female sexuality.
This fear suggests that Othello’s assertions of the spiritual nature of his love for
Desdemona were not entirely accurate. His statement that husbands cannot control the sexual
appetites of their wives includes the implicit suggestion that Othello wants to reserve
Desdemona’s sexual appetite for himself. Othello may pride himself in being a chaste
individual, but in reality he does lust after Desdemona, and it is this lust, combined with his
insecurities and his fear of Desdemona’s irrepressible sexuality, which allows Iago to so
easily provoke Othello’s anger and jealousy. Othello’s repressed anger and jealousy gradually
eat away at his composure until he lashes out at Desdemona, first with veiled insults; then by
berating her about his lost handkerchief and striking her; and finally by directly calling her
“that cunning whore of Venice that married with Othello.” Desdemona, in her innocence,
cannot even conceive of adultery, as she asks Emilia, “Dost thou in conscience think, tell me,
Emilia that there be women do abuse their husbands in such gross kind?” However, Othello is
blind to this innocence and carries out the murder of Desdemona, still haunted by the false
belief that Desdemona gave her handkerchief to Cassio and that the handkerchief is proof of
her infidelity.

To Die Upon a Kiss

The murder of Desdemona leads to the tragic separation of the two lovers, a separation
that Othello believes, once he learns of Desdemona’s innocence, will continue even after his
own death: “O ill-starred wench! Pale as thy smock! When we shall meet at compt, this look
of thine will hurl my soul from heaven and fiends will snatch at it.” Othello kisses
Desdemona one last time and then takes his own life, saying, “I kissed thee ere I killed thee.
No way but this, killing myself, to die upon a kiss.” Desdemona’s last words are more cryptic.
When Emilia asks who murdered her, Desdemona says, “Nobody—I myself. Farewell.
Commend me to my kind lord.” It is possible that Desdemona is trying to absolve Othello of
blame, but in light of her earlier exclamation, “O falsely, falsely murdered!” she may be
condemning Othello’s actions. In any case, the deaths of Othello and Desdemona do not
imply a romantic union of the two lovers after death.
Othello may not take full responsibility for his shortcomings—“Then must you speak
of one that loved not wisely, but too well; Of one not easily jealous, but, being wrought,
perplexed in the extreme”—but he does recognize the discrepancy between his final spiritual
destination and that of his “ill-starred” lover: "Whip me, ye devils, from the possession of this
heavenly sight! Blow me about in winds! roast me in sulfur!Wash me in steep-down gulfs of
liquid fire!O Desdemon! Dead Desdemon; dead. O! O!"

Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Incompatibility of Military Heroism & Love.
Before and above all else, Othello is a soldier. From the earliest moments in the play,
his career affects his married life. Asking “fit disposition” for his wife after being ordered to
Cyprus (I.iii.234), Othello notes that “the tyrant custom . . . / Hath made the flinty and steel
couch of war / My thrice-driven bed of down” (I.iii.227–229). While Desdemona is used to
better “accommodation,” she nevertheless accompanies her husband to Cyprus (I.iii.236).
Moreover, she is unperturbed by the tempest or Turks that threatened their crossing, and
genuinely curious rather than irate when she is roused from bed by the drunken brawl in Act
II, scene iii. She is, indeed, Othello’s “fair warrior,” and he is happiest when he has her by his
side in the midst of military conflict or business (II.i.179). The military also provides Othello
with a means to gain acceptance in Venetian society. While the Venetians in the play are
generally fearful of the prospect of Othello’s social entrance into white society through his
marriage to Desdemona, all Venetians respect and honor him as a soldier. Mercenary Moors
were, in fact, commonplace at the time.
Othello predicates his success in love on his success as a soldier, wooing Desdemona
with tales of his military travels and battles. Once the Turks are drowned—by natural rather
than military might-Othello is left without anything to do: the last act of military
administration we see him perform is the viewing of fortifications in the extremely short
second scene of Act III. No longer having a means of proving his manhood or honor in a
public setting such as the court or the battlefield, Othello begins to feel uneasy with his
footing in a private setting, the bedroom. Iago capitalizes on this uneasiness, calling Othello’s
epileptic fit in Act IV, scene i, “[a] passion most unsuiting such a man.” In other words, Iago
is calling Othello unsoldierly. Iago also takes care to mention that Cassio, whom Othello
believes to be his competitor, saw him in his emasculating trance (IV.i.75).
Desperate to cling to the security of his former identity as a soldier while his current
identity as a lover crumbles, Othello begins to confuse the one with the other. His expression
of his jealousy quickly devolves from the conventional—“Farewell the tranquil mind”—to the
absurd:

Farewell the plum’d troops and the big wars

That make ambition virtue! O, farewell,
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th’ear piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!”
(III.iii.353–359)

One might well say that Othello is saying farewell to the wrong things—he is entirely
preoccupied with his identity as a soldier. But his way of thinking is somewhat justified by its
seductiveness to the audience as well. Critics and audiences alike find comfort and nobility in
Othello’s final speech and the anecdote of the “malignant and . . . turbaned Turk” (V.ii.362),
even though in that speech, as in his speech in Act III, scene iii, Othello depends on his
identity as a soldier to glorify himself in the public’s memory, and to try to make his audience
forget his and Desdemona’s disastrous marital experiment.

Romeo and Juliet

From Romeo and Juliet

(Upon seeing Juliet for the first time)

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!

It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shines a snow-white swan trooping with crows,
 As this fair lady o'er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I'll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
I never saw true beauty till this night.

(and to Juliet)

If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth the rough touch with a gentle kiss.

A Search for the Romance in Romeo and Juliet

When people are trying to describe an incredible love story, a beautiful romance, a couple so
right for each other they seem to have been predestined by fate, two names are almost always
on the tips of their tongues: Romeo and Juliet.
William Shakespeare's tragic tale of two "star-crossed lovers" is virtually synonymous with
romance. Which is odd, because anyone who has read Romeo and Juliet (or even just the
prologue) knows that these two young lovers will take their own lives by the play's end.
What's romantic about that? There's no marriage, no babies, no "happily ever after." In fact,
their entire romance doesn't last as long as a nice vacation.
For anyone who's been living under a rock and hasn't read the play or seen one of the
many stage or screen adaptations, a quick Romeo and Juliet summary: the titular characters
are from warring families. The audience never finds out why the Montagues (Romeo's family)
and the Capulets (Juliet's family) don't get along, and it really doesn't matter. The reason is
probably stupid. Despite the families' ongoing feud, Romeo crashes the Capulet's big swanky
party and he and fair Juliet fall instantly in love. They know a relationship between the two of
them can never work in their home city of Verona, so they decide to run away together.
Thanks to some interesting conniving on the part of a member of the clergy and some
serious misunderstandings on the part of Romeo, who has been banished from Verona
because he killed Juliet's cousin, Tybalt (one of the more memorable minor Romeo and Juliet
characters, and the minor characters in this play are very distinct), Juliet takes a potion that
makes her appear dead, but Romeo thinks she actually is dead and decides to take his own life
at her grave so that they can be together forever in the afterlife. Shortly after he commits
suicide, Juliet comes to and sees her beloved dead at her side and this time kills herself for
real.
That's really romantic, right? What couple wouldn't want to be likened to those two? If
there is any bright side to be found in the tragic deaths of Romeo and Juliet (who,
incidentally, are both not old enough to drive), it's that their joint suicide brings about a long-
needed reconciliation between their two families. Lord Capulet helps to close out of the play
with one of the most famous Romeo and Juliet quotes, "As rich shall Romeo's by his lady's
lie; Poor sacrifices of our enmity!" He laments this to Lord Montague, who is, in turn, falling
over himself to praise Juliet. After all, what is a petty feud in comparison to the tragic suicide
of two lovelorn teenagers?
The sad thing is, of course, is that these two grown men couldn't find a way to look
past their differences until they realized that their stupid fight resulted in the tragic and
untimely deaths of their children. Juliet called Romeo her "only love sprung from [her] only
hate", and, by the end of the play it appears that the parents have learned to love their "sworn
enemies" as well. They just learned a little too late.

Themes, Motifs & SymbolsThemes

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Forcefulness of Love
Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is
naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love,
specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet.
In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all
other values, loyalties, and emotions. In the course of the play, the young lovers are driven to
defy their entire social world: families (“Deny thy father and refuse thy name,” Juliet asks,
“Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, / And I’ll no longer be a Capulet”); friends
(Romeo abandons Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast in order to go to Juliet’s garden); and
ruler (Romeo returns to Verona for Juliet’s sake after being exiled by the Prince on pain of
death in 2.1.76–78). Love is the overriding theme of the play, but a reader should always
remember that Shakespeare is uninterested in portraying a prettied-up, dainty version of the
emotion, the kind that bad poets write about, and whose bad poetry Romeo reads while pining
for Rosaline. Love in Romeo and Juliet is a brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals
and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves.
The powerful nature of love can be seen in the way it is described, or, more
accurately, the way descriptions of it so consistently fail to capture its entirety. At times love
is described in the terms of religion, as in the fourteen lines when Romeo and Juliet first meet.
At others it is described as a sort of magic: “Alike bewitchèd by the charm of looks”
(2.Prologue.6). Juliet, perhaps, most perfectly describes her love for Romeo by refusing to
describe it: “But my true love is grown to such excess / I cannot sum up some of half my
wealth” (3.1.33–34). Love, in other words, resists any single metaphor because it is too
powerful to be so easily contained or understood.
Romeo and Juliet does not make a specific moral statement about the relationships
between love and society, religion, and family; rather, it portrays the chaos and passion of
being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion, and family in an
impressionistic rush leading to the play’s tragic conclusion.

Love as a Cause of Violence

The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always
connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate,
violence, and death seems obvious. But the connection between love and violence requires
further investigation.
Love, in Romeo and Juliet, is a grand passion, and as such it is blinding; it can
overwhelm a person as powerfully and completely as hate can. The passionate love between
Romeo and Juliet is linked from the moment of its inception with death: Tybalt notices that
Romeo has crashed the feast and determines to kill him just as Romeo catches sight of Juliet
and falls instantly in love with her. From that point on, love seems to push the lovers closer to
love and violence, not farther from it. Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide,
and a willingness to experience it: in Act 3, scene 3, Romeo brandishes a knife in Friar
Lawrence’s cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and his
love. Juliet also pulls a knife in order to take her own life in Friar Lawrence’s presence just
three scenes later. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, “If all else
fail, myself have power to die” (3.5.242). Finally, each imagines that the other looks dead the
morning after their first, and only, sexual experience (“Methinks I see thee,” Juliet says, “. . .
as one dead in the bottom of a tomb” (3.5.55–56). This theme continues until its inevitable
conclusion: double suicide. This tragic choice is the highest, most potent expression of love
that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and
their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. In the play, love
emerges as an amoral thing, leading as much to destruction as to happiness. But in its extreme
passion, the love that Romeo and Juliet experience also appears so exquisitely beautiful that
few would want, or be able, to resist its power.

The Inevitability of Fate

In its first address to the audience, the Chorus states that Romeo and Juliet are “star-
crossed”—that is to say that fate (a power often vested in the movements of the stars) controls
them (Prologue.6). This sense of fate permeates the play, and not just for the audience. The
characters also are quite aware of it: Romeo and Juliet constantly see omens. When Romeo
believes that Juliet is dead, he cries out, “Then I defy you, stars,” completing the idea that the
love between Romeo and Juliet is in opposition to the decrees of destiny (5.1.24). Of course,
Romeo’s defiance itself plays into the hands of fate, and his determination to spend eternity
with Juliet results in their deaths. The mechanism of fate works in all of the events
surrounding the lovers: the feud between their families (it is worth noting that this hatred is
never explained; rather, the reader must accept it as an undeniable aspect of the world of the
play); the horrible series of accidents that ruin Friar Lawrence’s seemingly well-intentioned
plans at the end of the play; and the tragic timing of Romeo’s suicide and Juliet’s awakening.
These events are not mere coincidences, but rather manifestations of fate that help bring about
the unavoidable outcome of the young lovers’ deaths.
The concept of fate described above is the most commonly accepted interpretation.
There are other possible readings of fate in the play: as a force determined by the powerful
social institutions that influence Romeo and Juliet’s choices, as well as fate as a force that
emerges from Romeo and Juliet’s very personalities.

Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, and literary devices that can help to develop
and inform the text’s major themes.
Light/Dark Imagery.
One of the play’s most consistent visual motifs is the contrast between light and dark,
often in terms of night/day imagery. This contrast is not given a particular metaphoric
meaning—light is not always good, and dark is not always evil. On the contrary, light and
dark are generally used to provide a sensory contrast and to hint at opposed alternatives. One
of the more important instances of this motif is Romeo’s lengthy meditation on the sun and
the moon during the balcony scene, in which Juliet, metaphorically described as the sun, is
seen as banishing the “envious moon” and transforming the night into day (2.1.46). A similar
blurring of night and day occurs in the early morning hours after the lovers’ only night
together. Romeo, forced to leave for exile in the morning, and Juliet, not wanting him to leave
her room, both try to pretend that it is still night, and that the light is actually darkness: “More
light and light, more dark and dark our woes” (3.5.36).

How is love presented in Shakespeare's Comedies?

Love in Shakespeare's Comedies follows a pretty strict structural set of rules. There
are lovers introduced in the opening scenes of the play who sometimes fall in love at first
sight. Sometimes, one character must attempt to "win" the love of another character. And
sometimes, they are characters engaged in a battle of the sexes, but who are in love beneath
their barbed words.
 In Twelfth Night we have a variety of these types of lovers: Olivia and Viola both fall
in love at first sight --Olivia with Viola (who is disguised as Cesario), and Viola with Duke
Orsino. Sebastian also enters this play and falls in love with Olivia at first sight. There are
also lovers in this play attempting to win their beloved's affection. Both Andrew Aguecheek
and the Duke are after Olivia's hand in marriage. And there is also a bit of the battle of the
sexes going on between Sir Toby and Maria.
In Much Ado About Nothing, Hero and Claudio fall in love with each other at first
sight, and Beatrice and Benedick are engaged in a battle of the sexes that masks their true
feelings for each other. Both of these pairs of lovers have their situations complicated by
deceptive tricks that have a huge impact upon their feelings.
The Tempest, while not a traditional Comedy, does contain a very traditionally comic
pair of lovers -- Ferdinand and Miranda. They fall in love at first sight, and are the vehicle
whereby their estranged fathers are reconciled to each other. The interesting addition in this
play, is the onstage "magic," created by Prospero, that visibly draws the two lovers together.
Each of the above mentioned Comedies (and the pair of lovers in The Tempest) is required to
end in reconciliation and at least one marriage. In Twelfth Night, all the mistaken identities
and mis-applied feelings of love are sorted out, and the play ends with three marriages: Viola
and the Duke, Olivia and Sebastian, and Sir Toby and Maria. In Much Ado, the
complications are sorted out as well, and the play ends in the weddings of Hero and Claudio
and Beatrice and Benedick. And in The Tempest, the play also ends in plans for the wedding
of Miranda and Ferdinand.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Different Types of Romantic Love
Modern readers associate the sonnet form with romantic love and with good reason: the first
sonnets written in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy celebrated the poets’ feelings for
their beloveds and their patrons. These sonnets were addressed to stylized, lionized women
and dedicated to wealthy noblemen, who supported poets with money and other gifts, usually
in return for lofty praise in print. Shakespeare dedicated his sonnets to “Mr. W. H.,” and the
identity of this man remains unknown. He dedicated an earlier set of poems, Venus and
Adonis and Rape of Lucrece, to Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton, but it’s not known
what Wriothesly gave him for this honor. In contrast to tradition, Shakespeare addressed most
of his sonnets to an unnamed young man, possibly Wriothesly. Addressing sonnets to a young
man was unique in Elizabethan England. Furthermore, Shakespeare used his sonnets to
explore different types of love between the young man and the speaker, the young man and
the dark lady, and the dark lady and the speaker. In his sequence, the speaker expresses
passionate concern for the young man, praises his beauty, and articulates what we would now
call homosexual desire. The woman of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the so-called dark lady, is
earthy, sexual, and faithless—characteristics in direct opposition to lovers described in other
sonnet sequences, including Astrophil and Stella, by Sir Philip Sidney, a contemporary of
Shakespeare, who were praised for their angelic demeanor, virginity, and steadfastness.
Several sonnets also probe the nature of love, comparing the idealized love found in poems
with the messy, complicated love found in real life.
 The Dangers of Lust and Love
In Shakespeare’s sonnets, falling in love can have painful emotional and physical
consequences. Sonnets 127–152, addressed to the so-called dark lady, express a more overtly
erotic and physical love than the sonnets addressed to the young man. But many sonnets warn
readers about the dangers of lust and love. According to some poems, lust causes us to
mistake sexual desire for true love, and love itself causes us to lose our powers of perception.
Several sonnets warn about the dangers of lust, claiming that it turns humans “savage,
extreme, rude, cruel” (4), as in Sonnet 129. The final two sonnets of Shakespeare’s sequence
obliquely imply that lust leads to venereal disease. According to the conventions of romance,
the sexual act, or “making love,” expresses the deep feeling between two people. In his
sonnets, however, Shakespeare portrays making love not as a romantic expression of
sentiment but as a base physical need with the potential for horrible consequences.
Several sonnets equate being in love with being in a pitiful state: as demonstrated by
the poems, love causes fear, alienation, despair, and physical discomfort, not the pleasant
emotions or euphoria we usually associate with romantic feelings. The speaker alternates
between professing great love and professing great worry as he speculates about the young
man’s misbehavior and the dark lady’s multiple sexual partners. As the young man and the
dark lady begin an affair, the speaker imagines himself caught in a love triangle, mourning the
loss of his friendship with the man and love with the woman, and he laments having fallen in
love with the woman in the first place. In Sonnet 137, the speaker personifies love, calls him a
simpleton, and criticizes him for removing his powers of perception. It was love that caused
the speaker to make mistakes and poor judgments. Elsewhere the speaker calls love a disease
as a way of demonstrating the physical pain of emotional wounds. Throughout his sonnets,
Shakespeare clearly implies that love hurts. Yet despite the emotional and physical pain, like
the speaker, we continue falling in love. Shakespeare shows that falling in love is an
inescapable aspect of the human condition—indeed, expressing love is part of what makes us
human.

Motifs
Art vs. Time
Shakespeare, like many sonneteers, portrays time as an enemy of love. Time destroys love
because time causes beauty to fade, people to age, and life to end. One common convention of
sonnets in general is to flatter either a beloved or a patron by promising immortality through
verse. As long as readers read the poem, the object of the poem’s love will remain alive. In
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 15, the speaker talks of being “in war with time” (13): time causes the
young man’s beauty to fade, but the speaker’s verse shall entomb the young man and keep
him beautiful. The speaker begins by pleading with time in another sonnet, yet he ends by
taunting time, confidently asserting that his verse will counteract time’s ravages. From our
contemporary vantage point, the speaker was correct, and art has beaten time: the young man
remains young since we continue to read of his youth in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Through art, nature and beauty overcome time. Several sonnets use the seasons to
symbolize the passage of time and to show that everything in nature—from plants to people—
is mortal. But nature creates beauty, which poets capture and render immortal in their verse.
Sonnet 106 portrays the speaker reading poems from the past and recognizing his beloved’s
beauty portrayed therein. The speaker then suggests that these earlier poets were prophesizing
the future beauty of the young man by describing the beauty of their contemporaries. In other
words, past poets described the beautiful people of their day and, like Shakespeare’s speaker,
perhaps urged these beautiful people to procreate and so on, through the poetic ages, until the
birth of the young man portrayed in Shakespeare’s sonnets. In this way—that is, as beautiful
people of one generation produce more beautiful people in the subsequent generation and as
all this beauty is written about by poets—nature, art, and beauty triumph over time.

Stopping the March Toward Death

Growing older and dying are inescapable aspects of the human condition, but
Shakespeare’s sonnets give suggestions for halting the progress toward death. Shakespeare’s
speaker spends a lot of time trying to convince the young man to cheat death by having
children. In Sonnets 1–17, the speaker argues that the young man is too beautiful to die
without leaving behind his replica, and the idea that the young man has a duty to procreate
becomes the dominant motif of the first several sonnets. In Sonnet 3, the speaker continues
his urgent prodding and concludes, “Die single and thine image dies with thee” (14). The
speaker’s words aren’t just the flirtatious ramblings of a smitten man: Elizabethan England
was rife with disease, and early death was common. Producing children guaranteed the
continuation of the species. Therefore, falling in love has a social benefit, a benefit indirectly
stressed by Shakespeare’s sonnets. We might die, but our children—and the human race—
shall live on.

The Significance of Sight

Shakespeare used images of eyes throughout the sonnets to emphasize other themes
and motifs, including children as an antidote to death, art’s struggle to overcome time, and the
painfulness of love. For instance, in several poems, the speaker urges the young man to
admire himself in the mirror. Noticing and admiring his own beauty, the speaker argues, will
encourage the young man to father a child. Other sonnets link writing and painting with sight:
in Sonnet 24, the speaker’s eye becomes a pen or paintbrush that captures the young man’s
beauty and imprints it on the blank page of the speaker’s heart. But our loving eyes can also
distort our sight, causing us to misperceive reality. In the sonnets addressed to the dark lady,
the speaker criticizes his eyes for causing him to fall in love with a beautiful but duplicitous
woman. Ultimately, Shakespeare uses eyes to act as a warning: while our eyes allow us to
perceive beauty, they sometimes get so captivated by beauty that they cause us to misjudge
character and other attributes not visible to the naked eye.
Readers’ eyes are as significant in the sonnets as the speaker’s eyes. Shakespeare
encourages his readers to see by providing vivid visual descriptions. One sonnet compares the
young man’s beauty to the glory of the rising sun, while another uses the image of clouds
obscuring the sun as a metaphor for the young man’s faithlessness and still another contrasts
the beauty of a rose with one rotten spot to warn the young man to cease his sinning ways.
Other poems describe bare trees to symbolize aging. The sonnets devoted to the dark lady
emphasize her coloring, noting in particular her black eyes and hair, and Sonnet 130 describes
her by noting all the colors she does not possess. Stressing the visual helps Shakespeare to
heighten our experience of the poems by giving us the precise tools with which to imagine the
metaphors, similes, and descriptions contained therein.
 Shakespeare's Love Sonnets
Shakespeare was a man of many words and many contradictions. Upon reviewing
some ofthe 250 sonnets he wrote in his lifetime, there are many themes that he addresses.
Some regard the aspect of growing up from a child to a man,some describe misfortunes,
gains, losses, and the idea that immortality exists through literature. However, there are two
pieces in particular that focus on two combating attitudes on the subject of love. Sonnet 18
concerns idealistic love and beauty. The woman described in this sonnet is a picture of
perfection who would be hard not to love. That is, atleast, on the outside. In contrast, Sonnet
130 describes a mistress asan average woman with not quite as many flawless qualities.
Sonnet 18 opens with the famous line. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" and then
goes on to describe her as being much more "lovely andmore temperate." There are several
down falls that summer has that she doesn't. These down falls are that summer is too short,
the sun can be too hot, and, sometimes, the winds are too rough. She will never have these
loathsome qualities and he loves her all the more for it. The poem doesn't delve into the
woman's personality or anything else besides the fact that she's gorgeous. This is most likely
because Shakespeare wrote this sonnet when he was young, so his perspective on love must
have been skewed.The woman, however, in Sonnet 130, is described as the opposite of said
goddess. The speaker's tone is mocking of this woman's physical attributes. It's stated that, "if
hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" and "my mistress, when she walks, treads on
the ground." She is not an exquisite beauty, nor is she even slightly attractive. There are no
roses in her cheeks and, when she breathes, an odorous breath reeks from her mouth. This
woman is practically described as hideous, yet the speaker states how much he loves her and
her individuality. He loves that she's just an average woman and has learned to truly love her
for who she is. This wisdom must have come from age, as Shakespeare wrote this sonnet
when he was an older man.The attitudes in both of Shakespeare's sonnets concerning love
contain two different view points. The perspective in Sonnet 18 seems almost shallow
because he only admires the woman's beauty and ultimate perfection. Sonnet 130 shines a
different light on love, as he cherishes a woman who isn't gorgeous or even slightly pretty.
She's just a standard woman with standard looks and yet he's in love with her. This sonnet
contains deeper meaning than Sonnet 18, which he wrote when he was much younger. By the
time he was older andg ot around to sonnet number 130, his perspectives on life and love
certainly changed. This must be why Shakespeare's love sonnets contain such differing
attitudes on the subject.