William Shakespeare Objectifies Love in his Plays

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Recommended: Love in Shakespeare's Romantic comedies

William Shakespeare is known widely for his plays that dabble in comedy, tragedy, and most importantly, romance. Many of his plays incorporate more than one of these motifs. Throughout Shakespeare's plays, the characters and their dialogue give way to a cynical perspective on societal standards and views about love. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare derides the societal conceptions of love and chastises the ideals and yearnings of the members of the society. Shakespeare uses irony, metaphors, and plot dynamics to display the immense confusion of mistaken identity which emphasizes the theme love can exist only if society values it.

Throughout different time periods, many civilizations have altered their perception and value of love. Within the past few centuries, societies have shown a trend of decreasing their value of genuine love, and an increase in idealized concept of love, which has resulted in real love almost vanishing, being replaced by lust and infatuation. This brings to light the theme that love can only exist if society values it. This is because if the society craves infatuation, the society can use this feeling as a placeholder for love, without realizing that the feeling they are experiencing is not actually the feeling of love. In Britain, Shakespeare wrote the Twelfth Night; this society is one of the many societies that have fallen victim to their own ignorance and are under the mislead belief that petty infatuation and lust is in fact love.

The Twelfth Night was written to humor the audience with comedic situations, but it's purpose is to simultaneously mock the values of society-the very society laughing at the foolishness of the plot. According to Garner, "The Twelfth Night is a comedy whose background is e...

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...ence that is enjoying the play at laughing at the preposterous and ridiculousness of the plotline by mocking them because they do not value love as a society. Genuine love cannot exist in a society if the society does not truly value this love.

Works Cited

Garner, C. O. "Twelfth Night." Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 21 (1963): 41. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. .

McCulloch, Andrew. "Love and Lovers in Twelfth Night." Wellington College Intranet. Wellington College, 2001. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. .

Schalkwyk, David. "Love and Service in 'Twelfth Night' and the Sonnets." Love and Service in "Twelfth Night" and the Sonnets. Vol. 51. N.p.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 2005. 76-100. JSTOR. Web. 29 Mar. 2014. .

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