![]() ![]() ![]() Rather it be ancient Athens or olden Illyria, in the worlds of Shakespeare’s plays the easiest and most immediate way for a lover of less social standing to bridge the gap between himself and his desired beloved is by assuming the persona of someone of means. In accordance with classical thoughts concerning friendship, love is capable of achieving true perfection only when it occurs “between virtuous social equals” and said persons of virtue “were more likely to be noble than common” (Cox 3). Looking first at deception brought on by others, one recurring reason for the employment of this brand of deceit is to create the appearance of equality between the lover and their intended beloved. Each documented moment of deception, regardless of how it would potentially be classified, serves to reinforce the assertion that the nature of love espoused in Shakespearean comedies is intrinsically misleading and illusory. In both of the primary categories there are moments of purposefully malicious deception with the intent to cause embarrassment or discomfort, as well as either inadvertent or well-intentioned acts of trickery designed to improve the fortunes of the deceived. Categorizing the numerous instances of dishonesty in this manner makes it profoundly easier to identify similar occurrences across the two dramas based solely on the source of the trickery and the response of the victim.Īdditionally, this stratification also facilitates a more productive examination of individual events based on the causative agent’s underlying intention for the deceptive act. That is to say, the various acts of deceit in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night can all be divided into two principle categories: deception inflicted by an outside agent and self-deception. The most efficient method of distinguishing the different forms of deception Shakespeare addresses in his comedies is on the basis of the deceptive agent. The overwhelming presence of both deliberate and unintentional deceit combined in these two dramas can be easily viewed as evidencing the inherently deceptive nature of love. When examined together, these plays undoubtedly depict deception as an integral factor in the formation of both platonic and romantic relationships capable of simultaneously manipulating reality and revealing hidden truth. With deception present in nearly every relationship addressed in its respective play, these two comedic works are able to serve as a sort of rubric for understanding love as it is presented by Shakespeare. This assertion is exemplified in Shakespeare’s two comedies A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night. In Shakespeare’s many examinations of love, deception, in some form or other, serves as the overarching commonality. By focusing solely on this branch of love, Shakespeare is able to incorporate a plethora of illustrations throughout both his comedies and sonnets of parental love, sibling love, romantic love, and variations on the classical idea of phileo, or friendship love, while excluding such unrelated phenomena of affection as the love of material goods or the love of a particular season. Primarily concerned with love in the form of “the love of persons,” Shakespeare’s literature examines and scrutinizes several varying types of relationships stemming from different facets of a singular emotion (Nordlund 21). The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania by Joseph Noel Paton, 1849. ![]()
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