Shakespeare, Love and Language. By David Schalkwyk

Abstract

David Schalkwyk’s Shakespeare, Love and Language tackles “the large and impossibly complex topic” (1) of love and desire in Shakespeare. Its title notwithstanding, the book is less an argument about “language”—which Schalkwyk characterizes as central “in the pursuit of desire”—than it is a survey of Shakespeare’s “multifaceted and nuanced vision of love and desire” (12). Schalkwyk’s approach is “critically eclectic” (12): he gives us a Lucretian Midsummer Night’s Dream and a Lacanian Two Gentlemen of Verona; Marion and Cavell inform readings of Othello; Todorov is paired with Romeo and Juliet. Echoes of Schalkwyk’s earlier Shakespeare, Love and Service (2008) resound in his new discussion of Much Ado About Nothing. His book does broach a strong thesis in the final chapter: “for Shakespeare[,] desire is an emotion or affect” while “love is not merely a feeling … [and] cannot be reduced to any emotion” (7). But Schalkwyk seems less interested in constructing a definitive theoretical argument about any given play or plays than he is in testing and applying various theories in his readings of the plays—as if to say, “here are theoretical and historical frames through which I have tried to interpret the themes of love and desire in Shakespeare’s language.” Literary criticism often starts with such overtures, in conversation or in silent dialogue with oneself. Like Allan Bloom, Stanley Wells, or Maurice Charney, Schalkwyk has produced an honestly wrought set of reflections on the themes of love and sex in Shakespeare.