Tinika R RembertTroy University

Eng 1102May 01, 2011

William Shakespeare is known as one of the world’s greatest writers. Shakespeare has written many poems and plays but I chose to focus on a certain six that express love and hate. Those are…

The tragedy Romeo and Juliet The comedy A Midsummer Night’s

Dream The tragedy Antony and Cleopatra The comedy All’s Well, that Ends

Well The poem A Lover’s Complaint,

and The tragedy Othello.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy about two young lovers who are destined to be together despite the hate of their feuding families. Their lust for one another ends in their deaths and the end of the families feuds due to this great tragedy. Shakespeare wrote in a way expressing how naïve young lovers can be and how powerful lust is. The young lovers couldn’t be together in life so they choose to die.

Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a way of how one could lust over another even if they are not loved back. This comedy involves lots of fun and magic and the end results in happy couples.

Cleopatra is the mistress of Antony. Despite him being married she had a strong hold of him. This love he has for Cleopatra angered the Roman Empire. The two had a great run, filled with passion, but the two aren’t happy together which causes them both to commit suicide. In this tragic story, Shakespeare expresses the hurt, grief, and pain loving someone causes.

Shakespeare wrote this comedy filled with lust and trickery. The moral of the story was you can’t make someone love you the way you want, but once you think you are getting away with something; its actually you that’s been pawned.

In this poem a young lady writes about the extreme pain and hurt inflicted upon her by the man she loves. She speaks of his charm and in spite of the way he has treated her, she confesses that she would still go back to him. Shakespeare expresses how one could be blinded by love in this work.

When Othello finds out his love, his wife has been unfaithful it sends him on a jealous rage that causes him to hate the ones he loves the most. Death is the end result. Shakespeare expresses how love could easily turn into hate and jealousy. And how the hate and jealousy of another could destroy you. The moral of the story is to believe half of what you see and knew of what you hear.

Because of Shakespeare's common themes of love, hate, lust, and jealousy in his works amongst many other things, many wonder what fueled him to write about these situations.

…No one knows if the feelings portrayed in his works is how he really felt…

This will forever be a mystery..but Shakespeare will continue to live on as one of the greatest writers of all time.

Hylton, Jeremy. (1993). the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Retrieved 20 April 2011 from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

Sarah, LaDawn, Erika. (2010). The School of Midsummer’s Dreams. Retrieved 20 April 2011 from

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“William, Shakespeare.” En.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 20 April 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare

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