Shakespeare's famous saying:

The whole world is a huge stage, and all the men and women in this world are just actors. There is a time for each player to come on and off the field. Everyone plays many roles in life, and there are seven stages from birth to death. ——"As You Like It"

A brief discussion of the love concept in Shakespeare's plays

As one of the brightest stars of the Renaissance, Shakespeare occupies an important position in the history of world literature. His creations clearly reflected the characteristics of humanistic literature, pushed European humanistic literature to its peak, and became an important milestone in the history of world literature. Because Shakespeare's creations have reached a very high level in terms of thought and art, there has been a vast amount of research on his life and creations over the past hundreds of years. The humanistic ideals, the humanitarian thoughts of equality and fraternity reflected in his creations, and the praise and praise of youth, friendship, and love have high cognitive value and very important practical significance in today's society. Praising love is one of the major themes in Shakespeare's plays. Let’s start from Shakespeare’s drama and talk about Shakespeare’s view of love in my eyes.

Many of Shakespeare's plays describe young men and women breaking through the shackles of feudal ethics, traditional prejudices, religious taboos, selfishness, deception and other old thoughts and ideas, using their personal wisdom, intelligence and courage to boldly Pursue free and pure love. This created a series of vivid and daring new Renaissance female artistic images that shine with the brilliance of humanistic ideals. They are young, beautiful, gentle, affectionate, and optimistic. They dare to and are good at fighting to the end to realize their beautiful ideals. For example, Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing" is beautiful, smart, shrewd, and vindictive, Portia in "The Merchant of Venice" is brave and resourceful, and Imogen in "Cymbeline" is beautiful, kind, and clear about love and hate, and is willing to abandon her glory for love. , Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" died for the death of her lover, etc.

The love in Shakespeare's plays is all love at first sight. Once the protagonist finds his love, he will encounter various difficulties that hinder their union. But they will love passionately, and from then on they will pursue their pure love unswervingly and fight for it. At this point, ancient Western love stories seem to be somewhat similar to those in ancient China. The protagonists fell in love with each other as soon as they saw each other. However, in ancient China, the feudal power was too strong, and the struggle for love between young men and women seemed weak.

The feudal system of the era in which Shakespeare lived began to disintegrate, and the emerging bourgeoisie began to rise. At that time, the obscurantist ideas represented by religious theology in the Middle Ages were declining, the bourgeoisie's individualism-centered worldview became increasingly popular, and humanism began to occupy a dominant position in social and cultural trends of thought. People began to get rid of asceticism and pursue freedom and the right to love. The women in Shakespeare's works are persistent, courageous and resourceful in their indomitable struggle against various evil forces, reflecting Shakespeare's criticism of the cruel darkness of the feudal system and the imprisonment of human nature, and expressing the humanistic praise of free love and the anti-feudal ascetic bondage. social life proposition, and the emerging bourgeoisie’s desire to establish new social relations and ethical thoughts. This played a huge role in promoting the spread of humanism in Britain and Europe.

Another notable feature of Shakespeare's love is that it is permeated with a pure and romantic atmosphere. Once a man and a woman fall in love, great passion sprouts in their hearts. In addition, Shakespeare's language art has reached a state of refinement and proficiency. There are many lyrical, romantic and beautiful love words of the heroes and heroines in the drama, making the protagonist's love even more touching. For example, in "Romeo and Juliet", which has become an eternal love-themed song, Juliet waits for Romeo to come to the appointment with her beautiful monologue: "Come, night! Come, Romeo! Come, you day in the night! For you will sleep in the night On the wings, it is whiter than the fresh snow on the crow's back.

Come, soft night! Come, dear night, give me my Romeo; when he is dead, take him with you, scatter him into countless stars, and decorate the sky so beautifully that the whole world will love the night no more. Worship the dazzling sun. "These affectionate and passionate words have touched the hearts of many boys and girls. In the last scene of "Much Ado About Nothing", the bickering skills of Benedick and Beatrice, the vindictive enemies who are already in love, are hilarious. Laughing, even the dialogue during the proposal is full of humor: Benedick: “Strange things! Our own hands can write words completely different from what we mean in our hearts. OK, I'm willing to marry you; but God be damned, I married you out of pity for you. "Beatrice: "I don't want to refuse you; but God be damned, I only agreed to marry you because I couldn't obey other people's advice, and partly because I wanted to save your life; I was told that you were here. I'm losing weight day by day. "Benedick: "Don't talk too much! Let me shut your mouth. "(Kiss Beatrice.)

From many of Shakespeare's plays, we can see that Shakespeare places more emphasis on the chastity of the heroine when it comes to love. The heroines in his plays are all gentle, passionate, Vibrant, steadfast and pure, and the protagonists are all of noble origin, which makes people feel that in Shakespeare's mind, women are required to be absolutely pure. This also reflects the limitations of Shakespeare's humanistic ideas in some plays. The male protagonist misunderstands the heroine's chastity to promote the development of the plot. For example, in "Much Ado About Nothing", the cunning Don John uses a trick to make Claudio misunderstand Hero's chastity out of jealousy. Claudio becomes furious and publicly refuses to be with him. Hero gets married and accuses Hero of being a slut. This cannot but be seen as a flaw in Shakespeare's humanistic view of love. However, different societies have different views and requirements on the concept of chastity. Shakespeare lived hundreds of years ago. People should not be too harsh on this point.

Distinguish between love and lust

Love makes people feel comfortable, just like the sun after the rain, but the consequences of desire are like the sun after the sun. Storm; love is like spring, it always makes people warm and fresh. Desire is like winter, it comes in a hurry before summer is over. Love never makes people greedy, but lust is like a glutton, which means it dies of satiation. It is the truth, but desire is always weaving lies.

Is there someone who has always been in your heart? And you want to know: Is it love or lust? A good test, let's take a look!

When you think about this person, do you feel happy? Or is it upset? When you meet this person, do you always feel fresh, or are you occasionally passionate but often tired? The former is love, and the latter is lust. Shakespeare pointed out that lust is greedy - you can easily become jealous and tyrannical towards another person. You won't be greedy when you are together, but you also leave space for each other. Can you be honest with him? Is that love? Or are you trying to weave lies to win the other person's heart? Lust.

The conclusion is as follows: Love is always caring about another person; lust is only about yourself. Or do you just want others to wait for you? Answer this question and you will know whether it is love or lust