Romantic Love Theme Analysis

What passion hangs these weights upon my tongue? I cannot speak to her, yet she urged conference.

Come, come, wrestle with thy affections.

O, thou didst then never love so heartily! If thou rememb’rest not the slightest folly that ever love did make thee run into, thou hast not loved.

We that are true lovers run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.

Run, run, Orlando, carve on every tree the fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she.

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!

Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock.

Love is merely a madness, and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punished and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel.

O, for shame, for shame, lie not, to say mine eyes are murderers. Now show the wound mine eye hath made in thee.

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might, “Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”

Nay, you were better speak first, and when you were graveled for lack of matter, you might take occasion to kiss. Very good orators, when they are out, they will spit; and for lovers, lacking – God warn us! – matter, the cleanliest shift is to kiss.

Your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked; no sooner looked but they loved; no sooner loved but they sighed; no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.

[To Orlando] As you love Rosalind, meet. [To Silvius] As you love Phebe, meet. And as I love no woman, I’ll meet. So fare you well.

Peace ho! I bar confusion; ‘Tis I must make conclusion of these most strange events. Here’s eight that must take hands to join in Hymen’s bands, if truth holds true contents.

Play, music, and you brides and bridegrooms all, with measure heaped in joy, to th’measures fall.