Vlog #53 - Did Shakespeare Invent Love? 

Reallly loved you channel but I would like to remind you that European literature in general was, in Shakespeare's time, already saturated with the concept of love since the late Middle Age. To sing about love was a very popular passtime in courts, and even kings like Portugal's Dinis I and Castela's Afonso X wrote poems about it. Francesco Petrarca (1304 - 1374) introduced to Europe the love sonnet, and was widely immitated for centuries, you only need to study the love sonnets of Protuguese Luís de Camões (1524-1580), for example. And Henry VII and the War of the Roses was not te major force in the end of the ideal of stratification, you could attribute that to factors such as the cleareance of new lands thanks to the betterment of agricultural technology, which created the opportunity for common people to have access to land, the heavy toll of the black death which empowered the workers, the growing urbanization and commerce that made possible that the bourgeoisie could literate themselves and, therefore, occupy prestigious places in courts... Henry Tudor and the War of the Roses were syntoms rather than motivations for all these changes, in the same manner as Shakespeare is a syntom, or a pinnacle, if you will, of the ideas about Love that were already dominating european culture for the past three hundred years

Medieval society was actually far less stratified then you think. While the positions of the Peasantry, Nobility, and warrior aristocracy were stable, there was an entire dynamic middle class of merchants and scholars and burghers that had been forming since the end of the dark ages. They actually had more power in England then most of the other Christian nations of the middle ages (not counting the Hanseatic league and the Merchant republics).

While i love your videos and insight, I feel, everytime i see them, that you can'help but mix "humanity" and "the west". While everythin'you say about love and faux-timeless things is true for Europ, it's not for the rest of the world. For example the concept of love existed in Arab society for a long time, poems and legends like "antara" were writen centuries before the comin'of islam to the arab peninsula. Love was so important that there was hinor to die for your loved one. Also the concept of unmovable social ladder was kinda off. While it's true it was hard to move, it was possible centuries before modernism. A marchant or a priest could easily become head of a city by vote. That was even more true at the time of the rightly guided califs. Becomin'a war lord or general or simply a knight wasn'about bein'a noble but about bein'strong. And the most powerful people were those who had big companies and were great marchants, not land lords. And there was no king for centuries in arabs

That is a very angolphone centric perspective, since you can find the idea of love in the modern style in other languages and cultures at the same time without having them having them already contact with Shakespeare. Also, one could find cases for social mobilty too already earlier, and not just after wars but look at how many merchants became nobles in the italian renaissance just because of their economic power. And that is where the cycles closes, I think (judging from Shakepearse habit to borrowing from other works ideas) that the modern idea of love (and least the European origin, since ideas often develop on various places on Earth idependently from each other) started in Italy and thus Romeo & Juliet is about Italian noble houses.

If you think Romeo and Juliet is about love, I think you should read it again.

The comments are filled with constructive criticism! and I thought this was youtube! Interesting view point as always by the way. Love your videos.

The first **ENGLISH** writing to express love like this.

"...The best definition of what we know today as love. No text before this elevates love to such an incredible height. No text gives it the same quality and value in language. The most important of symbolic systems..." And that is where you lost me. First of all, I want to say that I love your videos. They are often insightful and always entertaining and I learn something new from almost all of them. But in this video you are dead, flat-out, completely, utterly wrong. You are building a castle in the clouds unaware that it lacks foundations. Shakespeare did not invent love, nor did he invent the romantic idea of love as portrayed in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare did not live in a vacuum and he did not write while ignoring what was written before him. He was well versed in medieval and contemporary (for his time) texts as can be seen in his many subtle references to other texts in his works. Romeo and Juliet itself is a reply and a critique of the romantic tragedies that were popular in the early Enlightenment/late medieval period. Shakespeare is not so much celebrating the love of Romeo and Juliet as he is critiquing its short-sighted folly while simultaneously praising its power to heal. In this case, the love of Romeo and Juliet "heals" or at least stops the violence between two warring families. It is worth noting, that in the high middle ages love was seen as a sort of sickness to be avoided. Men were told not to have sex before battle as it would weaken them and young, unattached men were often seen as stronger than married men. To fall in love was to catch a weakening sickness that would be sure to leave you "unmanned". It is also important to note that love and sex were not interchangeable words as they have seemingly become. You could fall in love without having sex and you could certainly have sex without love. But love for Shakespeare would not have been merely influenced by the medieval literature of which he was well versed. Shakespeare's idea of love was also heavily influenced by faith, if not his own faith, certainly the faith of others. Shakespeare is inundated with references and quotes from scripture. More specifically, Sheakespeare is full of references to Tyndale's Bible. That is, the incomplete Bible translated from the Greek and Hebrew that William Tyndale first published (new testament only) in 1526. Tyndale caused quite the stir with his illegal publication of an English bible and was eventually executed for it. This was such a monumental event in the history of English literature it is quite impossible to fully explore its scope. Shakespeare himself is consistently given credit for saying things that the Tyndale Bible did almost forty years before his birth. Things that he was merely referencing from said Bible. In fact, if we talk about love more generally and ignore the literary history for a moment: What is love? What does Romeo and Juliet say about love? It certainly is not a portrayal that is easy to swallow. The protagonists kill themselves, yet their deaths bring redemption to their families... Many characters die in the play because of the love (or loyalty) they show to their families. Capulet or Montague? Is either innocent in this play of love at the expense of another? The love in the play always at the expense of another. Romeo loves Juliet at the expense of Rosaline; the Montague clan love each other at the expense of the Capulets and vice versa; ultimately Romeo and Juliet's love is their undoing. So what is really going on here? It certainly is not a celebration of love, or at least, not unequivocally. Love or hate the Bible, you have to know that Shakespeare was deeply influenced by it. It is clear, from his numerous references that he at least read it. He may not have believed a word it said but he knew it inside and out. What does the Bible say about love? Several things, many things. Love is perhaps the central theme that keeps the entire book together: A God's love for his people and a people's love for their God. But also, a people's love for each other and ultimately a people's love for those who are not their people. The bible ends in Revelation speaking of a future where people from many nations become one Kingdom. The Bible has all this to say about love and more. You want something sexy (at least from an ancient Hebrew perspective)? Read Song of Solomon. Want fatherly wisdom? Read the Proverbs. Jesus's Sermon on the Mount tells people how to love each other. The Bible is full of examples of what happens when love fails and when people forget to love each other. Love is what it has always been about. If Shakespeare invented love then it must be remembered that Tyndale invented Shakepeare. Tyndale would have never laid claim to anything so modern as "invention" but would have rather pointed you in the direction of the Bible he translated and said, 'Everything I know to be true is in there.'

You're using Romeo and Juliet--a parody of love and its powers--as an example of the pinnacle of the modern incarnation of love? "No text before this elevates love--" I'm sorry, I'm going to have to stop you right there. Marie de France? Ben Jonson? Hell, Dante did more for love in Paradisio than Shakespeare ever did. The only reason Romeo and Juliet works so well is because the idea of romantic love had been fleshed out so thoroughly before it. Also, the rise of Early Modernity wasn't simply due to the rise of the Tudors. It was a long and intricate process, composed of the Reformation, decline of feudalism (which is in and of itself an entirely other, equally complex phenomenon) and shifting socio-economic trends (due to cultural disruptions such as the Black Death and incessant, pan-continental warfare of the 14th and early 15th centuries). I love your channel, but the bardolatry is a bit excessive.

Do you know you're on Pg 591 of Tim Ferriss's "Tools of Titans" ? (Thanks to Jason Silva)

how about the God Krishna playing on his flute and his lady love Radha.... the romance, the separation, the pain, the concept of purity of love and it's undying nature..... and talking about literature, Kalidas (5th century AD) wrote 3 plays: i) Mālavikāgnimitram ("Pertaining to Mālavikā and Agnimitra") which tells the story of King Agnimitra, who falls in love with the picture of an exiled servant girl named Mālavikā. ii) In the play Vikramōrvaśīyam ("Pertaining to Vikrama and Urvashi"), the mortal King Pururavas and celestial nymph Urvashi fall in love. iii) And of course the masterpiece Abhigyan Shakuntalam, which although is rather a drama than a love story, yet has Dushyant falling in love with Shakuntala. The play fascinated Goethe and it came to Europe, first translated into English and then German....

Even though I enjoy a lot of your content, I must say that when it comes to these sociological approaches to history, you seem to be very much Anglo-centric. Also, in terms of Shakespeare, even though I thoroughly enjoy his work, I have a hard time seeing him as the source of the this romantic-love symbolism. Just look at Tristan and Isolde for one, or the fact that Romeo and Juliet is based on local myths in northern Italy. No, I think love as the concept we know originates in the Moorish conquest of Iberia, and the introduction of romantic poetry to the region, which forms the basis of courtship affections. Where exactly and what the circumstances for it where, I don't know. Another quick thing, class "mobility" was not a first to arise in England, and arguably, it wasn't even as mobile during the Tudors as in many other societies at the time or before it. Just look at the Norse cultures, the Gauls or the merchant republics at the time.

Did he say schizophrenia wasn't a thing before modernity? Cause that seems really unlikely.

I see two problems with this interesting thesis: 1. It ignores the emergence of the courtly love tradition in the 12th Century; and 2. Social mobility and the breakdown of Feudalism in England was well under way before the Wars of the Roses. The impact of the civil war in the 15th Century was nothing compared with the population vacuum at all levels of society created by the Black Death in the 14th Century. (Read the Paston Diaries for a view from the new rising class.) Your thoughts on the emergence of new forms of stress and declining mental health in the 16th Century are also interesting. However I have always thought of this emergent phenomena in the context of radical changes in religion associated with the Reformation. See "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", Max Weber (1904) for an insight into the stress created when new religions remove traditional sources of solace and emotional stability. Keith Thomas's "Region and the decline of magic" (1971) also provides an interesting insight has to how Protestantism upset long establish systems for establishing epistemological certainty for the late Medieval mind.

Shakespeare was just good at describing the agony and the beauty of love, that's all. I think if you've been in love before, you can totally understand that it's not an idea planted in our minds (especially because love never happens the way we expect it/want it to happen) by society, but that is something we as humans have a deeper understanding of.

How about you do a video about arab poets and how did they conceive of love? your video remembered me of Qayss,he was a poet who was madly in love with a girl named Layla but never got to be with her. The poetry he wrote about her has a lot of the same symbolic aspects you were talking about. You really have to Google Qays and Layla! and maybe do a video about it! :)

You seem confident about whether "love is a sham" or not. But what "love" are you talking about? What is your definition of "love"? "Love" is a word used to mean MANY different things - from altruism and pair-bonding to possessive clinging and sexual passion, and more things (and combinations of things) besides. IMO one of the great fallacies of today is that - with our utter cultural obsession with the ideal of love - we toss around the word "love" and naively assume that we know what we are talking about - and assume that other people mean the same thing. And I don't think different people necessarily mean the same thing at all when they use that word. What definition do YOU use when you say that "love is not a sham" and "love was around before Shakespeare"? And is it the same as the definition Shakespeare used? Is it the same definition that people used before Shakespeare, or before the Middle Ages?

The impression that love is magic, the Hollywood-ization of that magic, killed the working man's love.

Every time I listen to one of these damn vlogs, I am made infinitely more aware of my own existence, you are a powerful grounding force my friend. Keep up the good work, you are one of the few people that keep me sane.

Have you ever read the portuguese poet Camões?

the way you put words together so fluidly and effortlessly is truly ingenious

The British aristocracy? British? Really?........

Actually, Andreas Capellanus (12th Century) talks about love a long time before Shakespeare. Capellanus gives, in great detail, dialogues between potential lovers of every different social order which sort of shows that love and marriage were not so strict in the Middle Ages. He also talks about love in very much a similar way as we do today in my opinion; as something powerful, wonderful, painful, and ultimately beyond the social order. Take a look at 'The Art of Courtly Love'.

The Butterfly Lovers, Niulang and Zhinu as well as The Legend of The White snake predate Romeo and Juliet by 2000 years and they have very similar themes and ideas. Niulang and Zhinu even has the whole "They can't be together because of lineage" thing going on. Shakespeare may have defined it in the West but the East had a whole two millennia on him.

Your view on the world and history is awfully anglocentric.

C.S. Lewis's book, The Allegory of Love, lays out the same argument, though in his view, the roots lie in the romances of the Middle Ages with Shakespeare as one of the last steps.

the correlation of personal identities and love makes so much sense.

This may be an internet created myth, but as someone in the performing arts I've heard from many people that Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was at first created basically as a farce of the idea of love, a sort of cautionary tale warning what can happen when you let pure emotion rule your life. It was later adopted as the pinnacle of the true love story when romanticism swept through England. Either way, it still holds up to the idea of symbolic reality, the latter (romantics) revolutionizing the former (the play's original theme).

It's far more complicated than that though. This is the popular, ironic reading nowadays, but it isn't just about the folly of youth - it is about the purity and innocence of love as well as the dangers.

It's far more than that, actually. There's a theory that one of the reasons Shakespeare is so easily read today, aside from various slang, is because English has not evolved much as a language since he wrote (compare his English with that of works just 100 years prior, and you'll see less change in the 400 since). One explanation is that we've been anchored to his writings in our culture and education, and that has arrested the development of language.

plus this is a very english and western centric exploration of the concept of love. I'm pretty sure that Shakespeare wouldn't have been translated into french or german till the the late 18th or early19th century, and probably not into chinese or arabic till the 18th or 20th century.

and honestly Shakespeare wasn’t that influential until the late 18th and early 19th century when he was popularized by people like Johnson and Wordsworth. The concept of love may have been changing at that point but I don’t know that you have enough to make an argument for causation unless you actually look at some of his earlier contemporaries and examine how the expressions of love change in the texts. Especially considering popularity of the sonnet form in the period.

1. "It is the star to ev'ry wandering bark" A "bark" is a boat, not a mind. 2. A much better portrayal of love is "Much Ado About Nothing", where a young, Romeo&Juliet-esque couple, Hero and Claudio, are contrasted against the older, more stable couple of Beatrice and Benedick.

Dear Nerdwriter, I may not be able to find the best words to praise you. All I can say is that you are rare. It is extremely difficult to find meaningful content that can broaden one's mind and contribute to one's identity. You are doing that, thank you.

This is an interesting argument. I'm no expert on medieval or Elizabethan history, and I am certainly a big fan of Shakespeare, but I believe it would be wrong to ascribe the invention of love as we know it today to the great bard. Joseph Campbell, in the Power of Myth, argued that we owe our modern ideas of love to the troubadours of the 14th century. The wandering minstrels that sang of deep interpersonal love that defied convention and God alike. The kind of love that would embrace eternal damnation for the ecstasy and joy that could be found in another person here on earth.

No offense, but stick to film/art... we can't all be experts at everything, and your knowledge of history is lacking to say the least.

I don't know man. The Odyssey pretty intensely shows love as the thing you can see your worth as and a cure to how the mind can pull itself down. I think that's what you were getting at as the definition of love.

Meera (Also known as Mirabai, born around 1498 in Rajasthan India and died around a decade before Shakespeare was born) - she devoted her life to Lord Krishna, considering the God her true husband despite being married off to a Prince who's family worshiped the Goddess Durga (whom she would have been expected to worship, but she refused). She wrote numerous poems and sacred hymnals to her beloved Krishna, as moving and passionate as any Shakespearean verse. So what do I win?

but soft, what light from yonder window breaks? it is the east, and this old nerdwriter video i haven't seen yet is the sun

I love the content, but i disagree: you can't disqualify old books or legends about love.

You don't have to understand a feeling in order to truly feel it.

methinks he doth "Great Men" history too much

The power of love is a mysterious thing...

there are a lot of mistakes and things not considered in that vlog. People in other comments mentioned already several ones. Also you didn't consider or mention Minnesang at all, which was much before Shakespear

One word: Petrarch.

It's in Plato's dialogues... so, there's really no question here...

It's a lovely thought but when Shakespeare wrote R&J love was considered to be a sickness. The play was a tragedy about the illness of love. The leads are two teenagers with spring fever.

I think you are ignoring the influence of fairy tails- The tails that were collected by the brothers Grimm, the thousand and one Arabian nights, and all the other tails and folklore all address a lot of the same themes, and with more modernity than Greek and roman mythology (and other mythology). Shakespeare may have been the spear head of a Renaissance of romance, but you shouldn't ignore the history of it that existed long before feudalism became the dominate form of government in Europe.

I pitty the fool who thinks Rome and Juliet is about love. It's not. It's about lust. Noone should take example out of it. In fact, I wonder how much this romanticised version of love that is so prevalent today does harm.

I love how your videos make me think. Also, thanks for pointing out that change after the wars of the roses, I'd never thought of it having that king of an impact as in, the rearranging of the hierarchy but it totally did.

Art is an imitation of reality. Love is universal, all Shakespeare did was capture the essence of it in a sense that hadn't been done so before in literature. Saying Shakespeare created love is like saying cameras created the known visible world, and before that everything saw in oil paintings since oil paintings were a visual art that preceded photography.

you should read Georgian writer Shota Rustaveli's the knight in the panther's skin. Great poem about love and it was written in 12th century instead of Shakespear's 16th.

man, I was just going to tell him back, "if you believe such a powerful thing as love can be "hijacked", you're not one to call people stupid." You make an intresting point however.

I can only aspire to become as articulate as you are :) But I do want to ask, have you read Le Morte d'Arthur? It was published almost a century before Shakespeare was born, and I would argue that it had its own enormous impact on the popular perception of love in very much the same direction as Shakespeare's work. I guess that, while I see the significance of Shakespeare's portrayal of love, I think you accredit to him a trend that he did not invent, only furthered.

Have you read "Status Anxiety" by Alain De Botton? He goes over a few of the things you were talking about earlier in the video about status and merit within society and the growth of status being the something that was the individuals task to achieve. Very good insight here. I do agree with others that love has shown up in cultures as far back as we can remember it, however I do think good ole' Billy Speare shaped a large chunk of our concept of love here in Western society.

Alright, 20 seconds in and I've already freaked out. You have St Dominic's Preview on Vinyl!!

Could you share some of the books on your bookshelf? Also what were some of your favorite books as a teenager?

this is amazing, i will be thinking about the topic for the rest of the day!

King Arthur legends and its concepts of courtly love predate Shakespeare by hundreds of years. Of course, Greek myths also had a number of love stories -- why did Perseus rescue Andromeda?

and ancient example of the love story is king Arthur and guienivvere and later on the love triangle with Lancelot. these stories are ancient in the UK and predate Shakespeare by 600+ years

It seemed to be a love trumps all type of thing. Despite the fact that they were born as enemies, they put love above all, including family and class. Shakespeare poses the question: which is more important to you, traditions and grudges passed down to you that you yourself hold no personal attachment to, or a love that is immediate and direct? The love was so immediate that people like to say their actions were foolish, but would it be any less foolish to hold a grudge solely based n tradition?

I just found my new favorite RU-vid channel ! Thank you

This is your most important video. Remember this. You have just changed the world.

Love is an addiction, not an emotion

Firstly that's not behaviorism. It's been a few years since I took psych 100, but I know that behaviorism was well before neuropsychology. Behaviorism was more concerned with the physical responses to stimuli, and it was done during a period of history when we didn't have the ability to record electromagnetic and chemical activity in the brain. In fact Behaviorism tried not to even talk about emotions and thoughts because it's proponents claimed they were unquantifiable.

The problem is when the person you’re in a relationship with defines you’re identity & then that relationship ends your identity is also lost. Perhaps this is why Romeo and Juliet kill themselves because they can no longer exist without each other.

There are vlogs? Have there always been vlogs??? (Sorry, I'm just looking for more of your videos to see... since I thought that I had seen all of them. Duuuuude, your video essays are some of my favorites. :') I'm always looking forward to see what you've been analyzing.)

"In the new system, the system of social mobility and ambition, choice becomes a part of the equation. The responsibility falls off God's shoulders and on to yours. Suddenly, you can fail at becoming at what you want to become with no one to blame but you. This was the bittersweet upshot of the new modernity. While many were reaping the positive rewards of climbing the social ladder, others were plunging into personal crises by failing to do so." Oh look at that. My quarter-life crisis put into words.

Yes.

I have to say, I'm not convinced that climbing the social ladder was that prevalent in Shakespeare's day.

Coffee on a Tuesday never gets uploaded on Tuesday.

Definitely one of my favorite video essays by you

Here's a rhetorical neologism inspired by the Nerdwriter -- enthusios. That's what's used when ethos, logos and pathos combined cannot quite persuade an audience, when the persuader must rely on enthusiasm to stir his audience into agreement.

One thing that I find strange is the linking of Henry VII and Shakespeare. Shakespeare was writing 105 years AFTER Henry became King. By the time Shakespeare was writing there had been 3 (arguably 4) monarchs since Henry. I feel like any problems that arose from Henry introducing mobility among the classes would not have affected Shakespeare at all. He also tended to just echo a lot of what he heard at court, for example Petrarchan sonnets were very popular at the same time as Shakespeare. I love your work and Shakespeare's but I have to disagree with you on this one.

I never looked at Shakespeare that way. I've always viewed him as a hopeless romanticist and I never really enjoyed his verse. But your modernist take on him is refreshing. I thank you, good sir, and I thank your Sociology professor. :)

LOVE you nerdwriter !

also, correctly me if I'm wrong, but didn't Shakespeare steel the plot to romeo and juliet from an Italian writer?

this is my favorite of your vlogs to date.

great video as always! you are definitely right about romeo and juliet informing the hollywood archetype of lovers, but what shakespeare was doing was in greek drama, roman drama, even the anglo saxon poetry that came hundreds of years before. Even the bible, if you read the song of solomon you can see where Shakespeare got his ideas of glorious passion from. and these are only the english texts. Invented love, no way. But definitely contributed to an accessible archetype that hollywood took

Thank god people in the comments are pointing out the flaws in this argument. People have a lot of good points, such as "what do you mean when you say love?", "social mobility was a thing already", and "there are other great non-western pieces that talk about love". It's fine to say that you think Romeo and Juliet is important as a piece of literature, but don't go implying that it's the first of its kind to "elevate" love.

Wow. That is a fascinating view. I would actually like to learn more about this. Are there any reading material that gave inspiration for the creation of the concept of love by Shakespeare?

Imagine if someone made a super cut of all the kissing scenes in every movie made. Jeepers.

Shakespeare tends to get too much credit for things he had little to do with. The lone genius idea often doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Did Shakespeare invent love in literature? Most surely not and if he did so, certainly not with Romeo and Juliet whose original love story is based on novellas of writers of the Italian Renaissance like Matteo Bandello (la sfortunata morte di due infelicissimi amanti/1554), Luigi da Porto (1524) and Tommaso Guardati (1476). And exactly there, in Upper Italy, in the florescence of the Renaissance, is where you'll find one of those historical venues of the rise of a new definition and understanding of the human being as an individual to a hitherto unknown degree: At the Court of Urbino as described in The Book of the Courtoir (1528) by Baldassare Castiglione. And Shakespeare, who knew this book by the way and who himself has been to these places in Italy in1575/1576 (I'm advocating the "Oxfordian" theories regarding the authorship in principle), was taking a huge advantage of this blooming zeitgeist by creating those sharply depicted characters (also especially from a psychological point of view). So Shakespeare (or Shake-speare as his actual pen name was written like) did not invent love in literature of course, but as a l'uomo universale of that time, a highly educated man and genius writer, he was able to outline and illustrate the vivid characters of his plays with such a deep insight in the human life and nature, with all its inevitable intricacies, with all the ambiguities and false bottomed certainties in love matters and things in general we're still struggling with today. I guess that's the main appeal of his (love) plays and stories to us still today besides the powerful eloquence. He didn't invent love in literature, but he made us most clear that all is depending on the perspective on it, a deceiving perspective most of the time, which is also as is generally known the key topic of his contemporary Cervantes. In that sense he may gave us a new basic idea of what love actually is...in this sense he perhaps did invent love.

Romeo and Juliet isn't about love, you may notice that Romeo was in "love" before even meeting Juliet, I think this passage in the beginning reveals Shakespeare intentions to banalize the passion of the youth, which led to a tragedy.

I love your videos, especially the ones that touch on mental illness because you approach it so well. I think you should reread Romeo and Juliet though, it's not about love but rather the damage that hate can do. As far as invintenting love, I don't think any one person can be credited with that, there are ancient love stories in both eastern and western culture. There is no doubt Shakespeare was a genius and certainly spoke often of romance, but it seems unlikely he believed in love when you really analyze his work.

An interesting theory and very well articulated. I posit, though, that Shakespeare's is not about true love at all but about control and manipulation. In essence it is a incarnated version of the nominalist vs. realist debate. Thanks for the food for thought, though. Your videos are always intriguing.

you videos are so fascinating a thought provoking

This is so good and captivating!

On the contrary, you argued against my use of the word "Passion," not the writings of Meera. I could change the word "Passionate" to "Romantic" and your rebuttal collapses... unless you want to get into the etymology of "Romance" - which again has nothing to do with Meera's poetry. Read the actual poetry, rather than trying to pick apart my response on semantic grounds, and try to tell me that they don't express love in the modern understanding.

Nerd, how often do you just lay down and meditate and come up with this stuff?

Nerdwriter1, This video is definitely interesting and got me thinking about the theatrics and passionate intensity of love that we are now so familiar with, and which you attribute to Shakespeare's R+J. I wonder what you think about Tristan and Isolde? How does that differ from R+J in terms of the theory you have proposed in this video? Best.

But even Shakespeare's R&J is just a version of an older poem 😫...

Kinda depressing the idea that love is a way for those of lesser means to make an important choice about their life. Interesting angle that I never considered.

"We love because He first loved us" "Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Bible ( 1 Corinthians chapter 13) and ( 1 John 4:19) THE BIBLE HAD IT RIGHT ALL THIS TIME - EVEN BEFORE SHAKESPEARE!

You know, I always felt it kind of odd how Shakespeare got so much credit for what are, in essence, remakes of existing stories. But I find your point about the timing of Shakespeare's life and career puts everything in a new perspective. He wasn't ripping off old stories, he was reviving them into something applicable to a culture in the process of re-invention.

You should do a vlog with just pictures. No dialogue, maybe some music. I dunno. I think it'd be cool.

Well, I have come across a book called "The French invented love" or something along those lines. I haven't read it, but I think it might be an interesting counterpart to this argument :] Besides, it reminded me very much of NIetzsche when you talked about Shakespeare as genius for crafting values.

There was no mention in his comment about intelligence. I would agree with him, actually. I wouldn't blame Christians specifically though, but the large monotheistic organized religions. As Shakespeare's idea of love being such a powerful and important force has become greatly involved into many cultures, these religions have taken to adopting it into their view of god, making him an entity of love rather than an entity of judgment.

This is my favourite video of yours! Really interesting stuff. Thank you :)