From his epic plays to his tender sonnets, William Shakespeare’s plays are classic texts on the human condition and the feelings. Among the Bard’s many subjects, love is the one constant and variegated. Shakespeare’s take on love is as equivocal as the people who fall for it, ranging from the highest romantic affection to the calamities of misdirected love. Though he wrote about “love” more than 2,000 times, Shakespeare’s love lines have made themselves felt over the centuries as we have learned to think about love, death and everything in between.
In this post, we take a closer look at some of the best Shakespeare love quotes that are still with us in hearts and minds for providing advice, beauty and insight into one of the greatest forces in the human world. If you are a lover, a mistress, or just a fan of Shakespeare’s work, the words about love speak for themselves.
1. Love that Never Breaks: Sonnet 116
Shakespeare’s idiom about love is the most quoted: From Sonnet 116: We write: As the sonnet is written: So, to the Love of the man, as I shall make it.
“Love is not love
Which changes when it alteration discovers,.
………
Or bends with the remover to shave:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That watches storms and is never shaken”.
Here Shakespeare makes this statement: ‘It is love which is eternal and constant. He’s saying that, in the most resonant of ways, love doesn’t undergo change even in the face of failure. And love will not give up on life, it will stand as a testimony of undying commitment regardless of what’s happened.
2. The Power of Love: Love’s Labor’s Won Lose Love’s Labor’s Won Lost
Love’s Labor’s Lost has Berowne writing a beautiful note about love’s transformative effect. He declares:
“Love is softer and more rational.
And the squishy horns of cockled snails.
………
And when love sings, the voice of all the gods.
Grasp heaven sleep with the sound.”
Shakespeare, here, likens love to a superpower that enlightens the human condition, making us ever more sensitive and more open to the world. Love, for example, here is described as an agent capable of producing divine coherence and transcendence.
3. Cupid’s Blindness: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare used to describe love as irrational, unstable and inexorable. As Helena declares in A Midsummer Night’s Dream:
‘Love sees not with the eyes, but with the mind.
And so winged Cupid painted blind”.
Such is the eponymous line’s message about how love is not about appearances, but rather is a feeling that goes beyond physical attraction. Love god Cupid is also usually portrayed as blindfolded to represent the imbecilic impulses of love, which is driven by feelings and not by appearances.
4. The Force of Love: Romeo and Juliet (Audition)
Some of the most famous love romances ever told in fiction: Romeo and Juliet is brimming with steamy loveliness. Perhaps the best Shakespeare love quote is Juliet in Act 2, Scene 2: Juliet, I will be happy.
“My treasure is as unlimited as the ocean, my wealth is never finished.
My love as deep. The more I bestow on thee, the more I offer Thee.
The more I have, for they both are infinite”.
Juliet says here how infinite she loves Romeo, like the vast ocean. This strong metaphor for how love only gets better with time, and this is about charity and devotion.
5. Love’s Anguish and Joy: Romeo and Juliet
Love is sometimes the most swell of emotions, but Shakespeare was also tolerant of its dark side. Romeo in Romeo and Juliet calls love a kind of two-edged sword: Love is a double-edged sword.
“Love is a flame set with sighs; love is a fire lit with sighs.
Cleansed, sparks in a lover’s eyes;
Being troubled, a sea that’s rich in lovers’ tears:
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choke gall and a preserve sweet”.
From this quote Romeo summarises the duality of love: it is hurtful but it is also sweet, the very same kind of love that can bring you to the heights of joy and the lowest depths of despair. Shakespeare was cognisant that, although love, despite its beauty, is always filled with anguish, it is a joy and a pain.
6. Love’s Destructive Power: Hamlet
Hamlet is the hero who confronts the destructive nature of love. He muses:
“The pangs of despised love.”
These are some of the most simplest expressions of how unrequited or un-loved love leaves a scar. Hamlet’s line tells us that sometimes, when you are loved, there is pain and heartache, indescribable thought and behaviour.
7. The Perennial Stability of the Soul: Twelfth Night
The main character of Twelfth Night, Feste, sings:
“What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter:
Present mirth hath present laughter.”
Feste’s tune is about how love lasts a very short time, about living in the moment. Shakespeare is saying here that love should be enjoyed while it is hot, not for a future that might never come. It’s a reminder to grab life by the scruff of the neck and experience the love.
8. Love in the tangle: A Lot Of Lip Service for Little To No Good?
Beatrice and Benedick have one of the best love-adversaries in Much Ado About Nothing. Benedick, who has already declared his love for Beatrice, remarks:
“There is no man in the world that I love as much as you do—isn’t it weird?
This quip, which is sort of a naughty jingle, epitomises love’s nuance, especially the one that goes with chatter and miscommunication. It speaks of human love, the love that is expressed unexpectedly or indirect.
9. Love’s Sacrifice: It’s All Good As Long As It’s Good All the Same
The heroine Helena of All’s Well That Ends Well reflects on her love for Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well:
“A heavenly realm on earth I won by pinning thee”.
Helena’s remark is about the ultimate payoff of love, happiness and satisfaction in devotion and commitment. Shakespeare also liked to see love as an agent of radical personal change whose rewards were worth whatever setback.
End of story: Shakespeare’s Indestructible Legacy of Love
The Shakespeare love quotes we read about in this article give only a partial idea of how profound the Bard’s conception of love really was. Be it describing the bliss of shared love, the pain of infatuation or the reversal of passion, Shakespeare’s words have stayed with us for hundreds of years. He wrote with so much of the nuances of love, from the sweet and the heartfelt to the painful and the tragic, that his observations of the human heart were as relevant then as when they were first composed.
Looking back on these profound quotations, we remember that love of all kinds is part of what it is to be human. The playwright Shakespeare has so much wisdom to teach us about this, and his love quotes still move, reassure and guide us in our own lives and relationships.
