Abstract

Abstract
Romantic Love in Shakespeare’s Comedy As You Like It
Lin Li

Inspired by Alexander Leggatt’s Shakespeare’s Comedy of Love and Kevin Pask’s The Fairy Way of Writing, this essay chooses the pastoral comedy, As You Like It, to analyze the theme of romantic love in Shakespeare’s works. The essay introduces, briefly, the history of romantic love, conventional courtly love and Petrarchan love, and the classical genre of pastoral, on which Shakespeare, the greatest English Renaissance playwright, has grounded his creative works.

The four pairs of lovers in the play demonstrate diverse forms of love passion, all of which develop to a merry conclusion: marriage, a popular tradition to unite lovers in Elizabethan era. As Rosalind and Orlando are the premier lovers in the play, the essay centres its analysis on the first couple, who presents an ideal and playful courtship in the woods of Arden. The other three couples, however, interact with the premier couple and, at the same time, have their own interesting engagements. The four love plots together weave an entertaining and distinctive network that provides all the lovers a merry home in the pastoral world.

This essay is focusing on interpreting romantic love itself, so it barely discusses social conflicts outside the idyllic and secluded Arden, such as the discords in the court and the city. Instead, the essay contemplates the lovers’ characteristics and their psychological developments, trying to explore love, one of our humanities, in a natural way.