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The Ideas Of Love In Shakespeare's As You Like It

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William Shakespeare’s As You Like It defies the ardent claims of love that traditional pastoral ideals celebrate. Typically, the pastoral ideals of love include two passionate lovers whose fortunes deter the possibility of having a “happily ever after” situation. However, As You Like It ridicules this extreme idea of love. Within every love story embedded in the play, which include the pairings of Silvius and Phoebe, Touchstone and Audrey, Oliver and Celia, and Orlando and Rosalind, there is a “happily ever after” moment for them with their respective marriages in the final act. Pastoral writing highlighted love stories where lovers could not be with their beloved as shown in Ovid’s Metamorphoses; however, As You Like It depicts marriage as …show more content…

However, Galatea and Acis are in love. Polymephus tries to do all that he can do to win Galatea’s affection, such as showering her with compliments, saying that she is “more playful than a young goat, smoother than seashells polished by unceasing waves”, even proclaiming to Galatea, “if you did not flee from me, you would be lovelier than a well-watered garden” (Ovid 463). Love in the pastoral is filled with these compliment, since the love seems to be very pure and passionate. . This idea exhibited the passion that the pastoral love typically takes on. In both cases of “love” here, there was an unfinished story with no “happy ending”. Polyphemus never received affection from Galatea, which prompted Polyphemus to “bury [Acis] completely” by “heav[ing] a massive rock, a piece of mountain that he had torn off”; however, “Acis had certainly not been erased: a river god- that was his newfound shape”, yet this was rendered “the end of Galatea’s story” (Ovid 467). The demise of Acis’ human form, rendering the relationship of Acis and Galatea to be forever unfinished brings about the eternal longing that the pastoral is known

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