Romantic Love in William Shakespeares As You Like it and Twelfth Night

Romantic retire in William Shakespeares As You Like it and Twelfth darkThe fickleness of romantic get by is a major theme in William Shakespeares comedies As You Like It and Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Shakespeares unspoken social com mentary takes the fundamentally manlike perspective of romantic relationships, which argues that a clear-cut dichotomy exists in the midst of hunch forward and physical attraction. According to evolutionary psychological theory, females often tend to automatically associate the feeling of love with physicality and the physical act of sex because an emotional bond with a mate is necessary in order to establish a unattackable family unit. Males, conversely, intellectually separate love from sexual desire because the essential masculine drive is to father as many offspring as possible, and to brook strong emotional bonds with numerous mates is impracticable (Kenyon). By presenting women mask as men who become the subject of other womens love at first sight, Shakespeare argues that the feminine notion of a correlation between emotion and attraction is a fallacy worthy of comedic contempt. Amienss birdsong from As You Like It sums up this argument. He sings, Most friendship is feigning, closely loving, mere folly (As You Like It, II.vii.182). This is an ironic piece of verse, because it is sung in the forest by one of the attending lords of the banished duke. The reader could interpret the duke and his suite as being symbolic of Robin Hood and his merry men (Moncrief), yet one would find it difficult to imagine Little washbasin telling Robin Hood that his own friendship to Robin was feigning. Love at first sight is treated contemptuously in some(prenominal) As You Like It and Twelfth Night. In th... ...at they were physically attracted to Ganymede and Cesario, respectively. They were mistaken, however, when they attributed their attraction to the emotion of love. Love, in Shakespeares artistic portrayal of it, is a deceptive, ethereal phenomenon false, fleeting, and unreliable. industrial plant CitedKenyon, Paul. evolutionary Psychology. SALMON (Study and Learning Materials On-line). 4 Apr. 2000. Univ. of Plymouth Dept. of Psychology. 1 Nov. 2005. . Path PSY364 Evolutionary Psychology support materials Evolutionary Psychology.Moncrief, Kathryn M. Lectures on As You Like It. Oct. 2005. upper-case letter College, William Smith Hall, Room 322.Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford Oxford UP, 1991.---. Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Eds. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor. Oxford Oxford UP, 1991.