Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

The title of my blog is perhaps misleading. In fact, I am not blogging to talk of love at all--well, no, I suppose that's not entirely true. I am talking about one very special love of mine, and that love is Shakespeare.

I have always had this insatiable desire to read Shakespeare ever since I was very young. From about the time I could read, I slipped down to my basement to take my parents' two-volume Complete Works set so that I could pretend I was a great actress, thou-ing and forsooth-ing, dying tragically and prancing merriliy upon an invisible stage. I owe all of my passion for the theater to Shakespeare, even though I didn't understand a single word of what I was reading for the longest time. But I just loved it, the way the words tripped off my tongue, dancing in the air before me. Everything sounded so wonderful.

Now that I understand the words being spoken, the awe and wonder I once felt has increased tenfold. Shakespeare is my little slice of perfection. Within his works is a line or two for every occasion, and often whole plays or sonnets perfectly suit certain moods.

My latest Shakespearean obsession is A Midsummer Night's Dream. I read it again a few days ago, and since have been devouring every word spoken by Helena in this play. Hermia may be the great beauty of the play, but I've only ever been interested by the unfortunate circumstances of Helena. What's more frustrating than a girl being led on by a guy, only to have him leave her to chase after her best friend, even after said best friend has expressed no desire to be wooed by said male? Helena really gets the shaft. Even in the end, she only gets the guy because the guy has been bewitched by a magic flower. How lame is that? I'm actually kind of railing against Shakespeare for this one, much as I love him, because it's just not fair that the only way Helena can be loved (or so it seems) is by trickery and magic. Not that she'll ever know that's the only reason Demetrius suddenly loves her again. Then again, without it, Demetrius may never have realized that he would never get Hermia and that what he really wanted had been in front of him all along. I guess I have mixed sentiments on the matter.

Regardless, I've been eating up this play like a starving animal, and Helena's lines just really speak to me.

"Things base and vile, holding no quantity, Love can transpose to form and dignity. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath love's mind of any judgment taste; wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste. And therefore is love said to be a child because in choice he is so oft beguiled. As waggish boys in game themselves forswear, so the boy Love is perjured everywhere."

I love the way Helena is fully aware that while Demetrius is being stupid for loving Hermia, she is just as foolish for keeping after him. But the simple fact of the matter is that she loves him, and there's nothing to be done about it, no matter how silly she feels about it.

Love is such a nice word. Perhaps that's what draws me to this website. The One Love. For me, the one love is being connected to other human beings, real (like the other TOL bloggers) or fictional (like my beloved Shakespeare's characters).

After all, "the greatest of these is love."

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. Greater, then, is The One Love, which looks only with the heart.

Love, Sarah

(I realized as soon as I posted this that at the beginning of my blog, I said I wasn't going to talk about love, and I really didn't intend to. The blog was supposed to just be about how much I love Shakespeare. Somehow or other it came around to love itself, though. Thus proving that I am incapable of staying on topic. Haha.)