The Greatest of These: Love in Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems
William Shakespeare's plays fall within many genres, among them tragedy and comedy. While several elements make a play tragic or comic, and Shakespeare himself was creatively playful with regards to these elements, the health of the marriages within the story serves as a barometer for the play as a whole. Universally, characters face conflict consisting of vice, hubris, injustice, nature, or chance. Tragedies, such as King Lear, involve defeat at the hands of these adversaries, with shattered marriages as one disastrous result. However, in comedies such as The Tempest, the characters come out on top not least because of their choice to love. Happy, hope-filled marriages are the result, revealing the power of love to defeat death and grasp at immorality. Shakespeare is tapping into a universal question here: whether to love in the face of life's inevitable trials. By investigating this theme with the depth and wisdom that he did, Shakespeare has made his works themselves, plays and poems alike, withstand time. Just as the characters in a comedy thwart death through love, literary works on love affirm that same reality.
King Lear is one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, and it contains one of tragedy's essential elements: the marriages ending disastrously. Tragedy involves characters undone by vice, hubris, and chance, with hope proving too little, too late. Time and death catch up with everyone, hero and villain alike. Regan's and Goneril's marriages are both causes and consequences of the tragic entropy of the play. Both are married at the outset, but Cordelia is not. Faced with Cordelia's refusal to flatter him, Lear flies into a rage, leaving her with the prospect of marrying with no dowry.[1] She is initially fortunate, as the king of France admires her virtue and integrity and marries her anyway.[2]
With the inheritance divided, Goneril and Regan work to disempower their father. Once Lear realizes their plan, he curses Goneril with childlessness in the presence of her husband Albany:
Hear, nature, hear: dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intent
To make this creature fruitful:
Inter her womb convey sterility:
Dry up in her the organs of increase,
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honor her![3]
The generation of children is a chief purpose of marriage; Lear is calling for its destruction because of Goneril's treachery. Marriage's other chief purpose, that of the union and good of the spouses, similarly suffers. Horrified by Goneril's familial impiety, Albany confronts her, saying,
She that herself will sliver and disbranch
From her maternal sap, perforce must wither
And come to deadly use.
. . . What have you done?
Tigers, not daughters, what have you performed?[4]
Not to be dissuaded by this irreparable rift in their relationship, Goneril mocks his courage and manliness.[5] They then hear the news of Cornwall's death, meaning that Regan is now a widow.[6]
Cornwall's death opens the door for the marriage of Regan and Edmund, but this becomes a source of contention between the two sisters, who have been united in intention until now. Regan says to Goneril's servant, "My lord is dead; Edmund and I have talk'd; / And more convenient is he for my hand / Than for your lady's."[7] Goneril's jealousy persists, despite her existing marriage to Albany, and Edmund finds himself caught in the middle. He says,
To both these sisters have I sworn my love;
Each jealous of the other, as the stung
Are of the adder. Which of them shall I take?
Both? one? or neither? Neither can be enjoy'd
If both remain alive.[8]
Although Regan and Goneril have worked together to gain power, contention over marriage divides them. Vice destroys their familial relationship and their collaboration, and spills over into their relationships with Albany and Edmund, concluding dramatically with Goneril poisoning Regan and then killing herself.[9] By the end of the play, all the marriages have been destroyed, Goneril's and Regan's by their treacherous scheming and Cordelia's by her death at their design. Several factors contribute to the deep sense of hopelessness at the curtain's fall, but the destruction of marriages is one especially tragic.
Shakespeare's comedies, in stark and happy contrast, resolve with healthy marriages or the hope of one in the near future. The state of marriage partly determines whether the play will be tragic or comic because it reveals whether the characters have chosen to love or not. The choice to love makes the difference between succumbing to vice, hubris, time, and death and thwarting them. In The Tempest, amidst a complex plot, including a plan to kill the king, a plan to kill Prospero, and Prospero's own inner conflict, the theme of marriage is consistently present. The play begins with marriage, as the king and his courtiers are caught in the tempest whilst returning from the princess' wedding. Even their wedding clothes remain unaffected by the storm. Gonzalo remarks, "Methinks our garments are now as fresh as when we put them on first in Afric, at the marriage of the King's fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis."[10]
Marriage seems to be foremost on Prospero's mind as he orchestrates the narrative. Ariel separates Ferdinand from his party so he might meet Miranda.[11] Prospero soon arranges that meeting, and the two are immediately taken with each other. Prospero reflects on the success of their first exchange: "They are both in either's powers. But this swift business / I must uneasy make, lest to light winning / Make the prize light."[12] He wishes for this relationship to be successful, and does his utmost for this to occur. Ferdinand demonstrates his character to Prospero, who first tests him with accusations of being a spy, then with the task of carrying logs.[13] The prince responds patiently to Prospero's challenges, and promises himself to Miranda "with a heart as willing / As bondage e'er of freedom."[14] Observing from a distance, Prospero says, "Fair encounter / Of two most rare affections. Heavens rain grace / On that which breeds between 'em!"[15] He then comes forward to promise his daughter to Ferdinand. He says,
All thy vexations
Were but trials of thy love, and thou
Hast strangely stood the test. Here afore heaven
I ratify this my rich gift, O Ferdinand.[16]
He then encourages them to maintain their purity before the "full and holy rite be ministered," and puts on a wedding masque in their honor.[17]
At the play's resolution, Gonzalo remarks on the parallelism between the purpose of their journey and its unexpected conclusion,
O, rejoice
Beyond a common joy, and set it down
With gold on lasting pillars: in one voyage
Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis,
And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife.[18]
The Tempest is bookended and infused with the theme of marriage, and the resulting hope spills over into the characters' futures. Prospero speaks of their return to Naples "where I have hope to see the nuptial / Of these our dear-belovèd solemnized."[19] Ferdinand and Miranda's marriage resolves the injustice of Prospero and Miranda's exile, first by bringing them home and then by reinstating Miranda's position. Daughter of a duke, she will soon be queen of Naples.
While Shakespeare's plays may be neatly categorized as tragedies or comedies, one's life is rarely that simple, instead containing elements of both. Human freedom determines the drama of both the stage and "the great globe itself."[20] Will it be tragic, succumbing to the sinful order, or will it be comic, opening up through the choice to love? Both time and death are certain, and yet, in choosing to love regardless, one can in a way transcend this inevitability. Shakespeare reflects on the relationship between love, time, and death in his sonnets, many of which refer to his own marriage. Musings about autumn lead to the words, "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well, which thou must leave ere long."[21] He holds love up against the reality of death, indicating this contrast as a sign of love's strength as well as a call to love more excellently. Spouses choose to marry knowing that it will end with intense grief and pain. Their love has a strength that uncommitted love lacks, and thus the potential for the greatest perfection. They can then be Miranda and Ferdinand, or Benedick and Beatrice, or Lysander and Helena, who overcome adversity and persist in their love. Shakespeare says something similar in Sonnet 55,
Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgement that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.[22]
Love means that his beloved will live on despite the reality of bodily death. This is especially poignant as Shakespeare is recording his love through writing, so that the beloved can endure in his words after their bodily deaths.
The power of love in the face of death shows forth additionally, then, in the immortality of literature concerning that theme. Washington Irving says in "The Mutability of Literature" that the poets "[have] the best chance for immortality" because "they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature."[23] Love is chief amongst those principles. The poet "writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him," making the poem evergreen in its relevance and its touching beauty.[24] Shakespeare reflected on his love in his writing, and so love served as an anchor which makes his works enduring. He in his wisdom seemed to perceive this potential, as he says in Sonnet 65:
Or what strong hand can hold [time's] swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! none, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.[25]
Everything becomes powerless in the face of time, and yet ink spilled on a page in service of love may endure. Shakespeare goes even farther, saying,
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.[26]
He boldly claims that love would not be love if it lacked the power to grasp at immortality. Consequently, all of the works of literature (including his own) that deal with love would be undermined, and possibly the whole venture of writing would be pointless.
Just as the characters in a comedy thwart death through love, literary works on love affirm that same reality. The destruction of the marriages contributes to the tragedy of King Lear, whilst the hope of Miranda and Ferdinand's wedding is instrumental in the comedy of The Tempest. Both plays involve conflict, but the outcome is determined by the characters choosing love (or failing to do so). Love, then, demonstrates a power to thwart vice, hubris, entropy, and ultimately time and death themselves. It transcends the most inevitable and invincible obstacles of human life. Shakespeare reflects on this pivotal attribute of love in his sonnets, and reveals his faith that such a mighty theme might render even his writings immortal. Shakespeare's works have deep roots, proven in their lasting effect on the imagination of the West. In the words of Ben Jonson, "He was not of an age but for all time!"[27] By rooting his works in Love, Shakespeare has, intentionally or not, conformed himself to the Alpha and the Omega, who was and who is and who is to come, "the Love that moves the sun and the other stars."[28]
[1] William Shakespeare, King Lear (New York: Dover Publications, 1994), 5.
[2] Ibid., 9.
[3] Ibid., 26.
[4] Ibid., 81.
[5] Ibid., 82.
[6] Ibid., 83.
[7] Ibid., 88.
[8] Ibid., 105.
[9] Ibid., 115.
[10] William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ed. Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2015), 57.
[11] Ibid., 27.
[12] Ibid., 45.
[13] Ibid., 47, 91.
[14] Ibid., 97.
[15] Ibid., 95, 97.
[16] Ibid., 121.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., 161.
[19] Ibid., 169.
[20] Ibid., 133.
[21] William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 73," ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed November 15, 2023, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/73/.
[22] William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 55," ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed November 15, 2023, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/55/.
[23] Washington Irving, "The Mutability of Literature: A Colloquy in Westminster Abbey," from The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Project Gutenberg, September 14, 2016, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2048/pg2048-images.html.
[24] Ibid.
[25] William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 65," ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed November 15, 2023, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/65/.
[26] William Shakespeare, "Sonnet 116," ed. Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, Rebecca Niles (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, n.d.), accessed November 15, 2023, https://www.folger.edu/explore/shakespeares-works/shakespeares-sonnets/read/116/.
[27] Ben Jonson, "To the Memory of My Beloved, the Author Mr. William Shakespeare," Poetry Foundation, accessed November 15, 2023, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44466/to-the-memory-of-my-beloved-the-author-mr-william-shakespeare.
[28] Revelation 1:8 (RSVCE); Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy Volume III: Paradise, trans. Mark Musa (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 394.
