In his paper “Is Love an Emotion? Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra”, David Schalwyk uses psychoanalytic criticism, and post-new historicist theory to dissect love in the never-ending quest to categorize what exactly it is. In his thirty-page paper, Schalkwyk takes readers first through multiple examples, papers, and theories on what love is, through love in Twelfth Night, and finally through love in Antony and Cleopatra. He ultimately posits and proves that “love is not an emotion, even though it does involve emotions. Love is a form of behavior or disposition over time” (Schalwyk 102-103). 

His essay is structured logically, so as to make it as accessible as possible, though he still assumes he has an academic audience with a certain knowledge of Shakespeare in his writing. First comes the post-new historicist analysis. He explains that perceptions of biology during the Shakespearean time period were different; specifically the concept that their understanding of emotions, or to be historically accurate, passions, were derived from Roman philosopher Galen who believed that humans are made of four humors: black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm. In his plays, Shakespeare and his audiences would have understood emotion as the working of these material substances throughout the body—an entirely different perception than we have today. From there, he moves into more theories on passion and love, and before getting to any play, explains that he will prove that emotion is not just an automated, chemical reaction in the brain, but a behavior, and a choice.

His analysis of Twelfth Night uses both psychoanalytic criticism to deconstruct love throughout the play and the historical context brought up in the first section of his essay. He explains that in Twelfth Night, one must differentiate between love and desire, and also explains that the post-Cartesian explanation of the soul is most accurate to Shakespearean work. As such, in Shakespeare, the soul “splits into the mental and physical aspects” (Schalkwyk 103).  Love as a concept is linked to the humors and as being a physical aspect of the soul rather than mental; it is something one can overeat on and purge, rather like bulimia, as in the case of Duke Orsino. He also differentiates it from desire, in that love reduces all objects to the same value, but desire itself fluctuates and is the bulimic aspect of love. Desire is intrinsically tied to aversion and craving, for to desire something, one cannot have it in the first place. In the play, Viola ultimately proves that love is a behavior, and not an intrinsic aspect of men and women in which they differ, during her dialogue with Orsino when he insists that women cannot love the way men can. While this has a Galenic basis in the concept that men are hot-blooded, and as such can hold the volatility of love in their bodies while women are cold and clammy, and thus sweat the love out, the behaviors of the characters in the play prove otherwise. Schalkwyk explains that “Acknowledging the passionate volatility wrought by love while insisting on its singular constancy… draws the audience’s attention to the fact that Viola is in love—with him” (Schalkwyk 108). This is particularly outstanding if one considers the fact that during the 1500s, the revelation in the play that women and men love the same would have been quite the stir, because it proposed that the two genders loved the same.

Schalwyk concludes with his analysis of Antony and Cleopatra, in which he furthers his thesis that love is not an intrinsic, encoded emotion, but a behavior that is learned and navigated over time. Shakespeare uses the passionate, many times argumentative banter between Antony and Cleopatra to prove that at its core, love is a dialogue that is intrinsically linked to performativity. Cleopatra demands not only that Antony love her, but that he does so publicly and in full confidence of who he is. Many of her taunts hit home only because Antony loves her, and his love is tied up with emotions such as anger, embarrassment, or impatience. For Antony to truly love her, he must decide between Rome and Cleopatra, but he does not demand that Cleopatra do the same because he doesn’t love her, but desires her. As such, part of his desire is Cleopatra’s constant changeability and denial of identity—he is forever chasing after her while she continues to change and evade him.

The essay is ultimately structured well, and logically. It moves cleanly, and it has clear sections; however, the two sections on Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra become slightly repetitive as the author uses the two texts to ultimately prove the same thing, just in slightly different manners. Ultimately, it is still interesting and more readable than if the analysis had been combined, and the stylistic choice holds sound. He also uses a variety of evidence—apart from 21st-century scholarship on love, he draws from Shakespearean philosophers and philosophers that Shakespeare would have read, from ancient Greek times, such as Plato. It makes sense: love is a broad, all-encompassing experience that spans time, and his scholarship reflects this. Though when beginning the essay one might believe that answering the question “Is Love an Emotion?” is too ambitious, Schalwyk uses all thirty pages efficiently and takes the time to dive in and dissect both Shakespearean plays efficiently and logically.

The biggest success in the article comes in placing our perception of love in a historical context, and keeping that grounding throughout by constantly referencing old scholars and explaining concepts via Galenic terms. Schalkwyk changes our understanding of Shakespeare as we know it via his paper—plays like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, “Othello”, and “Much Ado about Nothing” can all be read through a different lens, and love in these plays, all of which are very much centered on romance to an extent, can be reimagined. It can further be argued that Shakespeare, though a middle-aged straight white man who was misogynistic at best, is far more radical than one could realize. He almost completely reimagined love in his plays in a manner that shook things up and gave women far more of a say in falling in love than society would believe. For example, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, perceptions of love as behavior in Twelfth Night can even be applied to Hermia and Lysander’s relationship to prove that they do not love any differently and can fall in love because behavior is learned, not ingrained. Near the end, any questions I have left are offshoots of the article. Does Schalwyk’s explanation of love as a behavior apply to all Shakespearean plays, or even to real life? Is there scientific evidence to support that love is a behavior? Is behavioral love a long-term pattern in scholarship outside of Shakespeare? In the end, even without answers to these questions, readers are left feeling optimistic about the idea that love is not intrinsic—it is first and foremost, a choice that we are always making.

Works Cited

Schalkwyk, David. “Is Love an Emotion? Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Antony and Cleopatra.” Symplokē, vol. 18, no. 1-2, 2010, p. 99., doi:10.5250/symploke.18.1-2.0099.