What Is Love? Comparing Views"

What is love, really? Webster’s dictionary defines it as “warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion ”, it also could mean “attraction based on sexual desire : affection and tenderness felt by lovers ”. love has many meanings and is such a broad subject to talk about, but these are some of the types of meanings that you think of when you first think about love. In this analysis, we will be comparing the views on love from Shakespeare’s point of view, to the views of our generations today.

In the book that we are reading now, “A Midsummer Night‘s Dream”, one of the main concepts that it is focusing on is the concept of love. And as many know, there are different views on love amongst the characters in the book, from the passionate lover Lysander, to the fickle character of Demetrius. To us, Lysander and Herima kind of represent a young hopeful love, while Demetrius and Helena‘s one is a bit out of desperation. Another view on love is through the characters of Theseus and Hippolyta, which is seems as the love is a result of Hippolyta being Theseus’s “war trophy”. And though the relationship of Oberon and Titania seems to all work out in the end, but their relationship was probably one filled with trickery and some pain (ex. When Oberon had mad Titania fall in love with Bottom). There are many different kinds of love in this book, and it is easy to see why this line is said in the story, “ the course of true love never did run smooth”. Through much research, we believe that that line was truly from Shakespeare’s own way of thinking.

His love life was not as simple as one would think. It was rumored that he had fallen in love with a woman named Anne Whateley, but hastily married Anne Hathaway (she was 8 years older than him) because he had gotten her pregnant. If this were true, then his love life was not as perfect as one would expect it to have been. He had two children with his wife, and this was an odd thing in that time, because families usually have eight or more. His views on love aren’t seen until he had written his plays. In “Twelfth Night” he writes about men taking older women as wives, and in his next play “Measure for Measure” he writes about sex and how it should be overlooked. His next play (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in 1595) was written a couple years later shows the silliness in love, and make it seem like just a fascination. And finally in “Othello”, written in1603, he seems to portray the power of love and how strong it could be. By looking at the plots of these plays, you are able to see the transformation of his views on love. We are assuming that at first he saw it as a burden and a responsibility, then it had soon blossomed into understanding and a real feeling of love. So it seemed as though in the early years of his life he had not truly believed in true love, but as years had gone by, he had grown to love and accept his wife and had changed his beliefs.

After looking into the minds of the students and teachers in our campus we have gotten many different perspectives. It seems like many of the younger generations in our time seem to look at love in a sort of dream like way. To them, you will eventually find your soul mate and live happily ever after. Their main definition of love is usually towards relationships and boyfriends or girlfriends. Many of these ideas are probably idealized from our media and music. As for the older generations seem to see it as just a companionship and someone who can support you. They also see love towards other things other than relationship wise. They look at the love they have for their family, jobs, friends, objects, and places. There is also a definite difference between the male and female responses. Many of the females described love with lots of emotion and sometimes even poetically, with metaphors like “Love is like an everlasting sunset. -Aly O grade 9”. While many of the males said it in a way that was pretty straight forward and to the point, it seemed like many of them didn’t want a relationship or was very wary about it. “Love is when you are committed to someone and are faithful to them, basically you are their SLAVE! - Michael S. grade 11” so it seems that when people are younger, they believe in true love and some are even a little cautious about the whole thing.

In conclusion, I believe that many of Shakespeare’s views on love had not differed much over time to how we interpret love. It is something that is precious and irreplaceable. And sometimes it takes time to learn to love. It looks like males from our generations were the most similar to Shakespeare. This is so because they all seemed not up to a love relationship in the beginning but had learned to love and understand as they had gotten older.