Does shakespeare seems to consider a self destructive tendency inextricably connected with love?

Answer 1

Are you asking whether Shakespeare considers suicide and love to be the same thing? No, not generally. In the comedies the lovers get together and usually get married in the end. In the romantic tragedies Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra the lovers end up committing suicide. Cleopatra's suicide is perhaps more politically justified as she has no desire to be paraded around Rome as a specimen. It is similar to the reason why Macbeth says "lay on, Macduff". In the cases of Romeo, Juliet and Antony, however, their suicides are directly related to love: they hear that their beloved is dead, and do not want to live in this world any more without her or him. But this tendency to suicide seems to be specifically related to the circumstances where a lover hears about the death of a beloved (as happens to both Romeo and Juliet). Lovers in Shakespeare generally only seem to commit suicide for this reason. As disappointed as Troilus is in Cressida's infidelity, he does not kill himself as a result.

Answer 2

It would seem that Shakespeare does recognize a relationship between love and self-destruction. In Romeo and Juliet we find that both of the primary characters, torn between their families and love for one another, take their own lives in a barbaric coup of familial structure in attempt at grasping one's love.

It doesn't end there, though. In Macbeth we find that both the King and Lady Macbeth have gone mad, but not by some external force, rather as a result of their own infatuations.

Shakespeare isn't the only one, either, to see this sort of destruction and relationship between self and love. Noted phychoanalist, Lacan, once said that to love is to give something which one does not have to somebody who does not want it.

Answer 3

you must have mrs. may too :) -phil