Romantic versus Platonic Relationships in Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream

Abstract

Shakespeare's plays provide ample fodder for an analysis of almost any topic. His comedies, in particular, focus on love”its essential, essentializing and, indeed, totalizing influence on those under its thrall. The germinal plays of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream provide the focus of this analysis, which considers elements of the Platonic and the Romantic”not only their presence but their potential absence, and how those forms of love propel characters toward destinies that they themselves have not only not chosen, but not foreseen.