Sexual Desire and Romantic Love in Shakespeare

Analyses how far Shakespeare succeeds in reconciling two polarised areas in the early modern period: sexual desire, or will, and idealised approaches to romantic love Emphasizes cultural and semantic differences between Shakespeare’s age and our own that further our understanding of his texts - in particular, the importance of the signifier ‘will’ in its secondary meaning of sexual driveExamines Shakespeare’ sceptical approach to romantic conventions (neo-Platonic and Petrarchan) that bypass des