Love vs. Not Love There are very many different aspects of love in Shakespeare’s plays. Many people look to Shakespeare's plays because he truly connects with people's ideas about love. He believes many people “fall in love”, but it is a mistake because many people are blinded by it. People fall in love all the time in his plays, although most of the time people end up dead or heart broken. True love was hard to come by in the Renaissance age. Women were most of the time seen as property instead of people. “People in the renaissance also believed that woman was created by God with the sole purpose of serving and obeying man. From early on in a young girl's life she is taught that she is inferior to man” (Anderson 1). They were their father’s
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“Virginity was important for the women of Renaissance families, as their sexual behaviors were viewed in Christian terms and thought of as reflecting the honor of the family as a whole” (Huang 1). The refusal of marriage would end in one of two ways. The women could choose to become a nun where they lived their lives worshipping God. The second way depended on the region the women lived in, they could be executed if they did not marry these men. Theseus in a Midsummer Night’s Dream tells Hermia the consequences of her decision if she disobeys her father, “You’ll either be executed or you’ll never see another man again” (1.1). Many women answered to laws like the one that is depicted in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even in marriage men were allowed to do whatever they wanted because they were the patriarch. Men could commit adultery while they were married, “Men who were caught with extra-martial affairs did not have any consequences” (Morales 6). As the church’s control over its people waned adultery was becoming more widely acceptable for the men, “Meanwhile, the growth of the metropolis brought new opportunities, and changing ideas of civility made adultery more acceptable” (David 1). Men just thought as women as property, instead as the love of their …show more content…
I think in Sonnet 116 Shakespeare explains his beliefs perfectly, “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-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand'ring bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come: love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved” (1.1). He believed love was always there in their darkest times to comfort them. That it would not change from happenstance, that it lasted even if their beauty failed. Love would last over long periods of time, even over long distances. Love does not even discriminate against same sex marriage. That if they truly loved someone they would be faithful to them till the
“Virginity was important for the women of Renaissance families, as their sexual behaviors were viewed in Christian terms and thought of as reflecting the honor of the family as a whole” (Huang 1). The refusal of marriage would end in one of two ways. The women could choose to become a nun where they lived their lives worshipping God. The second way depended on the region the women lived in, they could be executed if they did not marry these men. Theseus in a Midsummer Night’s Dream tells Hermia the consequences of her decision if she disobeys her father, “You’ll either be executed or you’ll never see another man again” (1.1). Many women answered to laws like the one that is depicted in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. Even in marriage men were allowed to do whatever they wanted because they were the patriarch. Men could commit adultery while they were married, “Men who were caught with extra-martial affairs did not have any consequences” (Morales 6). As the church’s control over its people waned adultery was becoming more widely acceptable for the men, “Meanwhile, the growth of the metropolis brought new opportunities, and changing ideas of civility made adultery more acceptable” (David 1). Men just thought as women as property, instead as the love of their …show more content…
I think in Sonnet 116 Shakespeare explains his beliefs perfectly, “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-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand'ring bark, whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come: love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved” (1.1). He believed love was always there in their darkest times to comfort them. That it would not change from happenstance, that it lasted even if their beauty failed. Love would last over long periods of time, even over long distances. Love does not even discriminate against same sex marriage. That if they truly loved someone they would be faithful to them till the