asangam's blog

Love through hearing is one of the most important motors of the works of William Shakespeare. This statement will be analized along this second paper. If in first paper, we looked at the importance of this subject matter in the Shakespearean Comedy Much Ado About Nothing, now we will spread this knowledge up to other works, and concretely to As you Like It, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and a couple of shakespearean Sonnets.

The purpose of this work is very demanding and it is not posible to exhaust it in this blog, because it would require a much more exhautive work similar to the one needed to write a doctoral thesis. Then, this paper aims at tasting this new way of reading and watching Shakespeare.

And, which is this new way ? The very unknown features of human relationships which often are moved by what we call mimetism, or mimesis.

Human being is not isolated, and needs the other people in order to exist, this could be one of the reasons why everyone does what hears or looks from the others. And of course Love, as the most important realtionship among humans is highly influenced by this mechanism.

For example, friendship is the perfect coincidence of two desires. But envy and desire are not another thing. Mimesis of the desire is simultaneously the result of the better offered by friendship, and the worse given by the hate. This luminous paradox play a huge role in the theatre of Shakespeare.

In this paper we will appreciate the subtle ways in which this mechanism of mimesis is developed. Sometimes , like in the case of Benedick and Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, this mimesis is very clear. Sometimes it is quite hidden under the mask of antimimesis like in the case of As You like It.

In both cases, however, the importance of love, and the importance of society in order to love will lead us to meditate about the reality of our days, and perhaps we will find out that Shakespeare is not so far.