SHAKESPEARE ON LOVE

 

          SHAKESPEARE ON LOVE

            British dramatist and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has much to say about love in his plays and sonnets. Here are some quotes.

1.O powerful love! That, in some respects, makes a beast a man; in some other, a man, a beast.

2. Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.

3. The course of true love never did run smooth.

4. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/More than cool reason ever comprehends./The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,/Are of imagination all compact.

5.Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

6.Young men’s love then lies/Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.

7. Love’s reason’s without reason.

8.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,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within its 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.

 

G.R.Kanwal

21^st December 2023                                       *******