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“What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough.”
-Eugene Delacroix
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In the clutch of death an aged man contemplates that his life was a waste, a teenaged girl cries desperately to her parents for a choice, and all the while a goddess pines for a love she never knew. A couple sits in the cinema and watch a movie about two characters who by chance meet and then preserve a tumultuous set of events to be with each other. It is neither by fate, nor chance that a university student contemplates the idea of love while listening to music hum around her and asks the very same questions that perhaps the world’s greatest linguist asked hundreds of years prior to her birth and many more will contemplate for years to come. According to Harold Bloom, William Shakespeare "has been universally judged to be a more adequate representer of the universe of fact than anyone else, before or since." (1) Still today humans grapple to attain what they often cannot have and when the unattainable is love chaos often ensues. The displaced myth Shakespeare was most obsessed with is forbidden love. While Bloom reveals that he believes Shakespeare is undeniably obsessed with the myth of Venus and Adonis it can be strongly argued that such an obsession falls just under the umbrella of forbidden love. When an idea can transcend time and consider both the macrocosm and microcosm it appears to be worth investigating its value.
It seems essential to define love in order to effectively argue what it is that encourages Shakespeare’s obsession, but to define a word that has been argued to have no actual meaning proves to be difficult. Love, in the most simplistic of definitions is an emotion, often personified to describe the strong affection or attachment a person has for another. However, it is the complexity of such a state that requires one to assume that love does not always translate to mean the desire amongst humans (or gods), but the desire that one can have for both what is tangible and what is beyond physical existence. Love is often referred to as being part of a global language, or at least the idea that all humans understand the concept of love regardless of cultural or linguistic divisions. Regardless of the exact definition, when love is thought to be forbidden everything goes awry. Shakespeare uses the theme of forbidden love in the multitude of his poetry and plays as a way of ensuing bedlam and ultimately perpetuating a plot that is engaging to all. Although the language of Shakespeare troubles modern readers such was not the case when the author wrote the plays sending forth the notion that his performances were for the many classes of man. The common theme of prohibited love simply united the audience and allowed all to partake in the entertainment.
Both A Midsummer Night’s Dream (AMND) and Romeo and Juliet are prime examples of Shakespeare’s obsession with forbidden love. AMND threatens to fall into a dark void of despair for the characters, but then recovers exploiting the scenario with joy and hilarity. Conversely, the archetypal characters Romeo and Juliet appear to be destined for an idyllic conclusion despite the same theme of forbidden love when their fates are sealed amongst tragedy. Aside from the magical language, why is Romeo and Juliet still one of the world’s most beloved stories? Northrop Frye discusses that this tragedy is one that can take multiple forms of mistreatment in reproduction and still draw the audience to tears. “The original writer is not the writer who thinks up a new story-there aren’t any new stories, really- but the writer who tells one of the world’s great stories in a new way.” (Frye 29) Shakespeare is not the original writer of youthful love and death, and in fact Frye also asserts that this story probably manifested before written literature existed. “It takes the greatest rhetoric of the greatest poets to bring us a vision of the tragic heroic, and such rhetoric doesn’t make us more miserable but exhilarated, not crushed but enlarged in spirit.” (Frye 33) Perhaps unbeknownst to Shakespeare he incorporated forbidden love into his comedies and tragedies because of an overwhelming obsession on a topic that silently surrounded him in both life and prior literature. During the same time period Chikamatsu Monzaemon, a famed Chinese dramatist was creating plays dealing with honor bound lovers and double-suicides, furthering the notion that Shakespeare did not introduce the idea of forbidden love to literature, but continued reinventing the story that man, and possibly himself, were already obsessed with.
Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe reads closely similar to Romeo and Julie and as will be discussed later, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In Babylonia lived the handsome Pyramus and the fair maiden Thisbe. Upon meeting, desire burned intensely into love but their parents forbade a marriage. The couple planned to run away from the confines of parental rule and marry when Pyramus believes that Thisbe has been killed by a lioness. Distraught he then takes his own life moments before Thisbe returns to find him near death and in return catastrophically takes her life. This story is one of forbidden love where passion led to accidental deaths and tragedy; much like the story of Romeo and Juliet. If tragedy is thought of to be a sort of comedy turned inside out it is easy to understand that Shakespeare then created AMND by turning the tragedy back into a comedy. (Frye) The theme of forbidden love is easily interchangeable between comedy and tragedy because one action or event can cause the average love story to quickly go astray or settle into elation.
This obvious theme is not only apparent in Shakespeare’s well known plays, but takes form in the play Measure for Measure in a dark and horrific situation. Angelo lusts for Isabella’s virginity that she has pledged to Jesus. She has forbidden herself in the name of the church to give away her body regardless if it would save her brother Claudio’s life. Shakespeare transforms his obsession from the ordinary, as seen previously, to the extraordinary in Measure for Measure. Love, in this sense is not of typical definition, but rather the love of sexual desire alone. Nevertheless, it is still love and because of Isabella’s commitment to chastity it is forbidden. The following extraction from act two, scene 4 is an example of Angelo’s lustful desire for what is forbidden and how love in the emotional sense quickly turns to love as only a sexual act.
ANGELO: Plainly conceive, I love you.
ANGELO: He shall not, Isabel, if you give me love. ISABELLA: I know your virtue hath a licence in't,
It is with this dialogue that one can easily envision how forbidden love can encompass the very thoughts of an individual and drive them to disgrace their fellow man. King Lear never thinks in terms of love because what he desires most is already forbidden in his mind. Although Cordelia answers Lear’s questions with exactly what it is he desires most he cannot accept the answer because he has already vanquished it from being truthful. His obsession over what he believes is impossible eventually leads him and Cordelia to death. Cordelia’s love for her father was never forbidden or outlawed, but it was Lear who did not allow the love to exist in his mind. Essentially, the majority of characters Shakespeare developed struggled with the idea of forbidden love in various forms leading the reader to conclude that it is the author himself who struggles with the obsession. The point isn’t that Shakespeare wasn’t obsessed with the myth of Venus and Adonis because again a type of forbidden love prevails in the text. This lustful story, along with The Rape of Lucrece further exemplifies how man’s obsession with forbidden love (again as a sexual desire) can often lead to disaster.
Shakespeare was not the first, nor will he be the last to fixate over forbidden love. Frye believes that “Every society has an ideology, and its literature reflects the fact. But I don’t think any culture is really founded on an ideology: I think people first of all make up stories, and then extract ideas and assumptions from them.” (143) Today society, artist and non-artists alike still freely obsess over forbidden love. Although the term obsession is often associated with being negative and disastrous it can be used to perpetuate critical thinking, entertainment, and also used as a device to teach. Identifying a common theme amongst students aids their learning and overall comprehension, especially when faced with the difficulties Shakespeare often brings to the classroom. When forbidden love is thought of as a situation that propagates a known emotion it becomes a foundation for students to work off of while studying. “One of the greatest benefits of studying Shakespeare is that he makes us more aware of our assumptions and so less confined by them.” (Frye 4)
Jorge Luis Borges answers the question of “who is Shakespeare” by explaining that he is “everything and nothing” furthering that he is “everything” because he has offered readers a new version of a timeless obsession and “nothing” because Shakespeare’s obsession is one that has plagued many and will continue to do so for an eternity. Frederick Turner suggests that “With correct mnemonic technology, the whole universe can be stored in one man's memory” (59) and while considering that Shakespeare delivers his plays under the umbrella of forbidden love it can be said that indeed his words speak the language of the universe.
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: Riverhead, 1998. Book.
Frye, Northrop. Northrop Frye on Shakespeare.Binghampton, New York: Vail-Ballou Press, Inc., 1986. Book
Turner, Frederick. “The School of Night”. Frederick Turner’s Blog. Blog. 11 January 2011.
