Will & Love: Shakespeare and the Motion of the Soul

Will & Love examines four of Shakespeare's love plays (Romeo and Juliet, Troilus and Cressida, Twelfth Night, and Antony and Cleopatra) in light of the Augustinian psychology at the heart of the theological romance tradition. This tradition, which Shakespeare inherits from medieval theologian-poets such as Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, issues from the idea, initially expressed by Augustine in his Confessions, that love functions as volitional weight, as a kind of magnetism or almost-gravitational force--that it moves the lover in mysterious ways yet without diminishing his or her agency. Will & Love highlights Shakespeare's conception of love in terms of motion and explores the metaphysical, ethical, psychological, and dramatic implications of his doing so.