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摘 要

莎士比亚的戏剧中，爱情的主题萦绕在他大部分的作品里。他提出人类应从宗教，伦理传统和封建社会中解放出来。本文从他的人文主义观点入手，分析了莎士比亚喜剧作品当中人文主义爱情观的主要特点及表现，如在作品中表现出的莎翁剧中一见钟情式的爱情，皆大欢喜的结局，对于封建传统的反抗及男女平等思想的提倡等。经过分析，作者指出，莎士比亚的人文主义爱情观也因他所处时代背景而表现出了一定的局限性，如对爱情的盲目，逃离现实的行为及作品结尾牵强的大结局等。

关键词：莎式喜剧；人文主义爱情；特点；局限性

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 An Introduction to Shakespeare and his Comedies 1

1.2 Shakespeare’s Humanistic Love 1

2. Literature Review 2

3. The Features of Shakespeare’s Humanistic love 3

3.1 Love and Marriage 3

3.2 Human Right and Asceticism 4

3.3 Thoughts on the Emancipation of Women 6

4. The limitations of Shakespeare’s Humanistic love in his Comedies 8

4.1 Blind Imagination to Love 8

4.2 Escaping from Reality 9

4.3 Farfetched Happy Ending 9

5. Conclusion 10

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

1.1 An Introduction to Shakespeare and his Comedies

At Shakespeare’s times, Renaissance has swept the whole Europe, during which, the Europe is transforming from the feudal society of medieval period to the modern capitalism. Anti-feudal, anti-religion, and anti- thearchy are the keywords in literature works. In that case, Humanism has its great popularity among people and becomes the typical weapon to spout humanists’ slogans. Needless to say, Humanism is especially characterized through Shakespeare’s plays. To some degree, There’s no denying the fact that it is him who develops this topic to peak at the aspect of whether thoughts or artistic methods. Thus, Shakespeare himself has been recognized as the leader of the British Drama during the Renaissance in Europe. As mentioned above, the appreciation to love is one of the topics in his plays. The development of the relationship of men and women in plays catches our attention in its way all the time.

Shakespeare has written 14 comedies, but the real comedies in the strict sense are created in the first period of his life. Before 1600, the topic of humanism is presented in another broad way, mostly because in which period, the development of the society of Elizabeth takes place in its peak. Shakespeare has the idea that his dream of humanism can come true at his age. We will mainly talk about the humanistic love in terms of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Merchant of Venice, the Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, and As You Like It.

There have been many scholars doing research on Shakespeare’s humanism in his plays, and appreciating the love between characters through analyzing the plots, main characters’ images or other ways. We can see this two conception used to appear in divided articles. “Humanistic love” the topic is seldom presented as a brand-new way in order to analyze Shakespeare’s love. Thus, this kind of new topic is worth my time and interest to enrich the research of Shakespeare and his plays. This article mainly sums up the reflection and features of humanistic love from two aspects, but as well concludes the limitations of creation because of Shakespeare himself and his times.

1.2 Shakespeare’s Humanistic Love

Humanism is against the feudal autocracy and advocates freedom, equality and fraternity, believing the power of human. It is considered that the main purpose of human lie in the reasonable arrangement in their life and the pursuit of the happiness both in material and spirit, human beings should be healthy, rational, free, resistance and widely development. As we know, Shakespeare is regarded as a great humanist; his humanistic ideas about love are also well embodied in his comedies.

In his comedies, Shakespeare put the thought of facing the reality life, fighting for the liberation into his works. In order to deepen the theme, Shakespeare made the humanistic idea promote to the poetic fantasy after giving it with more light and happier story.

The article mainly explains the Humanistic love from the aspects of its features and limitations, which give a comprehensive understanding on Shakespeare’s humanistic love stories.

2. Literature Review

We can see some representative studies about Shakespeare in 20^th century. As times go by, the research of Shakespeare and his works develops into four groups in the world. The first group is the study of the mind (Xin Yamin, 2013:3): character analysis and psychoanalysis. Bradley is good at using the text of the play itself to analyze the characters, and Sigmund Freud takes Hamlet as the example to do the research on human psychology. The second group is historical criticism: Shakespeare and Elizabethan era. After Bradley’s study, there are some criticizers who change the focus of the study to explore the historical background and main life of Shakespeare, which helps us to understand how Shakespeare creates his plays in a better way. The third is Formalism: imagery, symbolism and archetype. With the rise of the modern poetic criticism and modern literature criticism, the formalistic study of Shakespeare comes to be developed in 1930s. Spurgeon is the beginner of this kind of study. L.C. Knights announces one new method of introducing the theories of poetry into the Shakespeare’s study. Last group of the critics is Political and Cultural criticism: from margin to center. At this time, the study of Shakespeare is influenced mostly by the theory of Marxism and deconstruction, and becomes the political disagreement. But with the rapid changes of the times, some people say that the study of Shakespeare comes into the trouble and endless quarrel.

About the topic of Shakespeare’s humanistic love, the representative discussion in the history reveals in Aleksandr A. Smirnov’s in Shakespeare: A Marxist Interpretation, and Marcus Nordlund’s In Shakespeare and the Nature of Love, Aleksandr claims in the early years, Shakespeare is a humanist full of the endeavor to focus on the moral, political and philosophy questions in his society, Which is the authorized and populated conclusion. However, Aleksandr writes that “there is no question that the roots of his art must be sought, not in the circles of epicurean noblemen, but in the revolutionary ideas and moods of the bourgeoisie.”(Aleksandr, 1936: 18) He then lists three periods of Shakespeare to prove that how Shakespeare’s dream and idea come to be in dilemma and his works perform helpless and painful. We can’t deny this, but Aleksandr himself as a Marxian, the aim of considering the question will be discussed. In Shakespeare and the Nature of Love, Marcus Nordlund takes the theme of love in Shakespeare’s dramas as his tool to arrange his book. He concentrates on the nature of love in “constructivist historicism” which states that love is not natural but changeable conception. His point of view is that Shakespeare’ love has the tendency to be idealized and overvalued, but in some plays, this rate of “instinct value” has reduced a lot, and the power of nature doesn’t work well. Tzevan Todorov who appears in Nordlund’s bibliography in defense of humanist love, puts that “what lies at the heart of humanist love is our capacity to transform the finite into the infinite in the singular person of the beloved, rather than instrumentalizing that person as a mere means to a higher ideal of truth and beauty”.(Nordlund, 2007: 78) No matter which is right, this both of the different views are reflected in Shakespeare’s plays, but for us, we also can’t figure out the truth because everyone has individualized thoughts ruled by our experience, our social connections and identity. For Shakespeare himself, ironically, his blindness in the plays is magnified because of his time and his personal elements.

3. The Features of Shakespeare’s Humanistic love

3.1 Love and Marriage

Shakespeare is good at describing the love affairs in his comedies, in which, the love between the man and the woman seems to sprout quickly at their first sight mostly. In As You Like It, Rosalind is so brave that when she meets Orlando at first sight, she tells her cousin she loves Orlando and gives out her ring as the token. “The little strength I have,/ I would it were with you”(Shakespeare, 1990: 14) and Orland responds “O poor Orlando, thou art overthrown!/ Or Charles or something weaker masters thee”. (Shakespeare, 1990: 14)We can find easily this “quick love” is passionate and brave. In the Merchant of Venice, Bassanio and Portia fall in love at their first sight, and Portia helps Bassanio’s friend---Antonio get rid of Shylock, the treacherous moneylender who wants a proud of Antonio’s flesh because Antonio applies for a loan from Shylock . In order to save them, Portia dressed as a judge uses her wits to defeat Jewish Shylock. Shylock’s conspiracy has been foiled. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare arranges the flower called “love-in-idleness” as the induction of love. Tzevan Todorov’s ideas here differ from others. He defines the humanistic love from “the finite” to “the infinite” to approve the power of love between lovers at first sight, and this is the same with Shakespeare.

After reading through Shakespeare’s plays, it is easy for us to find that these stories used to develop in twisted plots, but eventually have happy endings. In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio and Hero fall in love and they decide to hold the wedding, but Don John defiles Hero that she isn’t a virgin in order to destroy her marriage. Hero faints out of angry. Claudio thinks she’s dead. However, in the end, Claudio gets the truth and they tie the knot. In Twelfth Night, Viola disguised as a young man serves for the Duke, and helps Olivia pursue the Duke’s love. And then the plot moves with surprise toward a climax. At last, Viola and Orsino, Olivia and Sebastian walk forward the gate of happiness.

Love in Shakespeare’s comedies seems so impeccable. People show their capacity whatever the outside world effects their love. It is this kind of emotional power that brings the lovers to the fancy which is seldom met around us. The men and women appreciate each other, and love each other at the first time. Because of this, we can see the importance of the brilliant light of Humanism.

3.2 Human Right and Asceticism

In medieval Europe, it should be agreed that the Christian is the center of all kinds of culture. God is the omnipotent and the almighty of the universe. On the contrary, human beings are born with the sin. In that case, people are supposed to surpass their sensual passion in all aspects. However, on the one hand, with the development of economy, capitalism is coming to spring up. On the other hand, the religion construction itself appears to be rotten to the core. Here comes the humanism to get rid of the corrupt system of exploitation in order to be ready for the further progress of the economy of the capitalism. Until this, humanism grows to be introduced into England in the 15th or 16th century approximately. At Shakespeare’s times, humanism has been the dominant idea of his society. And Shakespeare himself is represented as the leader of humanists. He does the same thing in his works, namely, populates the humanism conception, for example, he emphasizes the importance of the human nature and human rights. He claims that people are not supposed to be held in bondage by the church, especially the corrupted church. The thoughts, the feelings, and the wisdom from human, cannot be controlled by the dogmatic religion any longer. Likewise, he thinks that the feudal moral principals constrain the awakening of people’s self-consciousness and that men and women can catch their happiness through personal efforts.

As a humanist, Shakespeare displayed awakening conscience in his plays in which human realized the strength of reason and free will. But the humanistic spirit not only includes concerns to human, human’s value and the maintenance of dignity, it also includes the understanding of human nature and the thought on the relationship between human and the universe. All of these formed the connotation of the humanistic thought in depth. Just as Alan Bullock suggested that human’s experience were the starting point to understand human, God and nature. Shakespeare’s plays manifested the deep meaning of humanism. Shakespeare’s understanding of human’s nature was just the same as that of Christianity; he thought human’s nature was free. All kinds of desire and free will caused human to distinguish themselves from animals and became human beings. But on the other hand, the desire to realize free will would cause human nature to be filled with evils. Therefore human’s existence is limited, its tragic situation is doomed if they don’t control their desire and free will.

In All Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare expresses his thoughts about Chastity through Parolles, and it reads, “"tis against the rule of nature. To speak on the part of virginity is to accuse your mothers; virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offenders against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese; consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach.”(Shakespeare, 1990: 7) Obviously, Shakespeare here goes against the canon that women must be chaste and pure, which is totally different from the discipline of the church that betrays the natural rules and humanity. At that age, women are regarded as the evil and human nature is restricted all the way, but Shakespeare compares human to angel and he thinks the beauty and wisdom of women are so important and worthwhile.

Shakespeare expresses his hatred for the asceticism strictly and comically through his comedies. For example, In Love’s Labour’s Lost, the king of Navarre makes up his mind to live isolated from the earthly life including refusing to get close to women along with his three nobles. However, once the princess of France takes some ladies to his country, the king and three noblemen can’t help falling in love with these women regardless of the religion rules. At the beginning of the play, the king of Navarre is announcing to his three noblemen that, “Let fame, that all hunt after in their lives, Live registered upon our brazen tombs, And then grace us in the disgrace of death; When, spite of cormorant devouring Time, The endeavor of this present breath may buy that honour which shall bate his scythe’s keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity. Therefore, brave conquerors- for so you are that war against your own affections and the huge army of the world"s desires.”(Shakespeare,1990: 2) Then he asks his men to take an oath not to see women and to study for three years blind to the earth in order to let their country be a wonder. When the king hears that one man sits beside one woman and talk cheerfully, he takes the man into jail and decides to give some punishments to him. The king is so proud of his belief in the asceticism and he thinks the affection of love is the main curse of preventing his devote to his country. And he regards human nature and human right as the forbidden fruit. Needless to say, the king’s ideas are totally against the natural rules, which also explain why he falls in love with the French princess, when she meets him with unique attraction, as do his noblemen with the ladies. You can see how ridiculous the ascetic is when he says to himself his endless love in the poem. Then the king himself and the three noblemen break the oath to woo to their lovers in the name of Cupid. Ironically, the king of Navarre changes his attitude to love from suppressing his sexual desire to emancipating his love. Shakespeare lashes out at this unrealistic and strict ascetic practices in the middle age to prove that love is one of human nature and the power of love surpasses that of the religion cannon.

Shakespeare, as a great humanist, promotes that human nature should be free and human rights should be respected completely.

3.3 Thoughts on the Emancipation of Women

Humanists insist on that people are born equally, and they think people shouldn’t judge one person according to his or her family status. This idea has been even promoted in modern society, which improves the social relations between people in moral circle greatly. Especially, it brings the light to that black age at which human nature is smothered and women’s status is ignored and even humiliated. Women living at that time hear the Gospel. Shakespeare thinks, women should be given equal rights. Female images are the centre in the most Shakespeare’s comedies. To some degree, we can say the marvelous part in his comedies is the description of the women characters. All in all, the common characteristics of these female images can be concluded as pursuing individual liberation, chasing the happiness of love and embracing the quality of wisdom and bravery.

In Shakespeare plays, we can take some examples to state that the equality of men and women is another good point to perform the superiority of humanist love. In the Merchant of Venice, Portia appears to be more intelligent and smart. She can use her wisdom rather than her emotion. She dresses up herself as a judge, which itself is a challenge of the patriarchal society. Needless to say, Portia uses her intelligence and eloquence to save her fiancé and brings Shylock to justice. We can say that Portia is a symbol of the awakening of humanity, compared to the situation of the time, women never have their right to show the side of individualism, neither does their marriage. But you can see in the Merchant of Venice, Portia has the opportunity to choose what kind of men is suitable for her, she is not controlled by any other people. Generally speaking, this perfect topic used to appear in other comedies of Shakespeare. If someone is still skeptical about Portia’s attitude towards her father probably because she, as a woman of astute intellect, abides by her father’s plan to have her marry a man selected by chance. Compared to the images of Antonio, Bassanio and other men, the image of Portia gets more favorable reputation. Portia is the typical woman who gets respect from men by her quality and personality in Shakespeare’s comedies.

Then in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you will find there’s an Athenian law requiring a daughter to die if she does not do her father’s will. However, let’s see how Hermia does. She refuses to accept her father, Egeus’s wish to marry Demetrius that is selected as her husband, but plans the elopement in the forest with her beloved Lysander. Louis Montrose says that the consummation of marriage is how power over a woman changes hands from father to husband. By all means, the character, Hermia is so determined to get rid of her father and does what she wants to do in such a patriarchal world. Moreover, she behaves as a man to fight for her love and marriage, even superior to men to pursuit her ideal wish and dream.

In the Merry Wives of Windsor, ladies are so clever that they play tricks on the impoverished nobleman Falstaff who pretends to be gentle and means to molest them. They want to teach him a lesson and plan to throw him into the Thames River and give Falstaff the punishment. Also, we even can see some men in cowardice play as the supporting roles to pick out the women’s bravery and wisdom in works.

It is the female images that excel the male that help Shakespeare fill out his humanistic dream. Through these, he appreciates equal, brave and free love. Only by persisting in love can you win the true love. As a great humanist, Shakespeare has his unique opinions which can’t be understood completely at his times. His thoughts about humanistic love are of great significance in modern society.

4. The limitations of Shakespeare’s Humanistic love in his Comedies

4.1 Blind Imagination to Love

We can’t doubt that the works of the writer must be affected by the climate in that society. That is to say, the creation is directly from what has taken place in the reality. Thus, because of the blind optimism covered in Renaissance, “human”, this conception is too overestimated to discipline and lead people to practice right. The literature is no exception. Here should point out The Taming of the Shrew of Shakespeare, “the Shrew’s story of the taming of a woman’s independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors”, as Friedman, Michael D. writes. At the some time, his attitude towards love at some aspects changes a lot. We can conclude that works of the writer must be affected by the climate of his times.

In the middle age, the religion and feudalism oppress human beings, the literatures take the responsibility to criticize the dogmatic church and decayed system in order to arouse the emancipation from the old world. Nevertheless, out of all kinds of reasons, these people don’t know themselves well and just follow in the footsteps of others to boast of their humanism in chaos without considering this idea thoroughly. The blindness is inevitable. Meanwhile, the problems are put forward by them, but they are not capable of solving these problems. The writers write well with flowing passion under the Humanism sun, but themselves have no way to find out the exit of the guidance of actions.

In Shakespeare’s plays, you can find the settings of characters are beyond reality. The love from his works used to take place at upper class, not between the ordinary people. The lower class tends to meet their true love compared to the upper. It’s not clear why Shakespeare doesn’t describe this kind of love. Also, we should be very impressed that Shakespeare is good at describing the love, during which, the love between the man and the woman seems to sprout quickly at their first sight mostly. In the Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio, posing as a tutor, woos Katherina’s sister, Bianca,and wins her heart because he first sees how Bianca is. But if we compare Lucentio’s first sight of Bianca with the later appearance of Bianca in the last act, we can conclude that Shakespeare perhaps aims at giving another point about the contingency of love. Including in Romeo and Julie, Romeo falls in love with Julie again, though he should looks forward to curing his lost love for the once girl. However, comparing these three works, the leading characters take their cost of the love at the first sight, even like Romeo and Julie losing their lives.

Then, for example, in Romeo and Julie, Shakespeare himself sets the plot that Romeo and Julie kill themselves to make the two families united. He arranges this ending to express his wish, but which even can’t come out in real society. Thus, the power of love in Romeo and Julie seems very ideal and invisible. Shakespeare’s love takes place in the first sight, which itself reveals that the love in his works is wrapped with the ideal coat. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia just goes against her father in order to get along with her lover, but we almost see her doing nothing but echo Lysander’s idea to go away from her family. Hermia doesn’t make her detailed plans under the circumstance where she knows nothing about the future of their love. Love appears to be emotional and blind here. When the lovers are busy escaping from the trap, they don’t know the next trap is waiting for them and recognize the changing of their life and their love.

It can be concluded that the place, the way, the character, and the ending of love in Shakespeare’s plays is so idealized because of the blind imagination to the love itself and the reality.

4.2 Escaping from Reality

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Hermia refuses to listen to her father to marry others and she thinks she can do nothing but escaping from her family, “If then true lovers have ever crossed, It stands as an edict in destiny. Then let us teach our trial patience, because it is a customary cross, as due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs, Wishes and tears, poor Fancy’s followers.”(Shakespeare, 1990: 23) On the surface, Hermia has the tendency to give up the struggle of changing the situation, but when Lysander asks her to his aunt’s house, Hermia can’t wait to swear to her lover “by Cupid’s strongest bow” to go there to have the wedding. So Lysander and Hermia run into the forest regardless of the reality. Their bravery is necessary in love but we always say the solution of getting love in Shakespeare’s comedies is escaping from the reality.

In As You Like It, Rosalind, accompanied by her cousins, and Frederick, whose wealth are chased by his brother, who choose to do nothing to go against the reality, meet up in the forest of Arden and love each other at their first sight. On one hand, these leading characters are lacking in courage to take realistic actions to change the condition, on the other hand, Shakespeare’s times can’t permit him to figure out any way to complete the love.

4.3 Farfetched Happy Ending

In Much Ado About Nothing, Claudio and Hero behave so sweet in the relationship, but then they misunderstand each other. Benedick and Beatrice look down upon the love and the marriage but they are designed to love each other. The plot performs intense at this point. However, at last, Shakespeare always comes up with his idea to solve every problem. You can see that everyone in the comedy join the dance to celebrate the weddings of the two lovers. The ending is designed similar to the A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, all the tricks are settled in the morning when they wake up, the comedy ends in the wedding of lovers. If every conflict in the reality can be escaped in Shakespeare’s way, maybe that world has been beyond our imagination. Obviously, Shakespeare has no other way to solve the problems appearing in his real lives and his works.

Needless to say the characteristic of As You Like It, the title of the comedy reveals the Shakespeare’s ending, the lovers express their feelings and live together, the lost wealth is gotten back and the relatives begin to remedy the breach to build new relations. Comparing the development of these love with the author’s processing method in the end of the comedies, we used to feel the ending so farfetched.

5. Conclusion

Shakespeare is a great humanist, playwright, and poet. Shakespeare’s works influence generation to generation. His plays especially moved many people all over the world. Some typical images and plays are even showed on the stage and screen many times until now. His works also benefit the literature creation of the later writers. For us, it’s difficult to find out another literary author like him. This article analyzes Shakespeare’s humanist love to explore its value. There’re some restrictions inevitably entitled the Renaissance and humanist love. Even so, many of his statements shine his time and our time. To some degree, Shakespeare’s plays can be seen as instruments of social order and reconstructions. His humanistic thoughts in his works will affect people through time and space all the time.

So far the paper has presented a comparatively systematic study on the love stories in Shakespeare’s comedies. The author analyzes various love types in his comedies, the dominant characteristics of those love stories. The last but not least important is the limitation of his love stories. The analysis, though limited and imperfect in many aspects, will help to reach a better understanding of Shakespeare’s comedies.

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