Shakespeare On Love

From the desperate passion of the sonnets to the delightful bewitched love scene in "a Midsummer Night's Dream, " this anthology cuts across age and class, taboo and prohibition, to focus on Shakespeare's themes of love.

Shakespeare's plays and poetry have enjoyed worldwide popularity since their first publication. They are constantly studied, performed and filmed and seem to strike a universal chord. Reigning supreme over all other themes in the poet's work is the theme of love, revealing perhaps, as Simon Callow observes in his introduction, that 'Shakespeare was irresistibly compelled by love's imperatives: when love called, he could not refuse.' From the desperate passion of the sonnets, the poignant balcony scene in the tragedy Romeo and Juliet, the delightful bewitched love scene between Titania and Bottom in the comedy A Midsummer's Night Dream to the less obvious but nonetheless enduring relationship between one man and his dog in The Two Gentleman of Verona, this anthology cuts across age and class, taboo and prohibition.