Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0140.  Tuesday, 28 February 1995.
 
(1)     From:   Don Wall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 27 Feb 1995 12:29:55 -0800 (PST)
        Subj:   Love at First Sight
 
(2)     From:   John Mucci <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Monday, 27 Feb 1995 16:17:49 -0500
        Subj:   Romantic Love
 
 
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Don Wall <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Monday, 27 Feb 1995 12:29:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject:        Love at First Sight
 
Dale Lyles implies that Shakespeare's couples who fall in love "at first sight"
are thereby fit subjects of comedy because their "'infatuation'" is"inherently
funny."
 
However:  isn't it true that the medical theory of that time provided a
physiological explanation for this phenomenon?  As I recall, if the image
(phantasm) of a potential loved one conveyed by the senses to the heart warmed
the blood so that it released the "spirits" in the blood, then that information
was conveyed--by the spirits--to the soul.  The result was love--spiritual
love--at first sight.
 
Donne and Marvell--among others--seem to believe this theory, or some variation
of it.
                              Don Wall
                              Dept. of English, MS-25
                              Eastern Washington University
                              Cheney, WA  99004-2431
 
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From:           John Mucci <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Monday, 27 Feb 1995 16:17:49 -0500
Subject:        Romantic Love
 
I am not sure that all Shakespeare's couples fall in love immediately; I am
thinking of early on in Richard III, when Gloucester has that long scene with
Anne, and he asks her to "take up the sword again, or take up me."  He manages
the impossible, to get her to marry him, when he has just killed her husband as
well as the king.  Of course, on the one hand, you may say that there never
*was* love between them, even after marriage, or that it really *was* love at
first sight, with Anne calling him endearing names ("Dost grant me,
hedgehog?"), even though she speaks venomously of Gloucester.  It is such a
bizarre scene, with emotions all over the scale, that I am not sure I know what
each is thinking from moment to moment; but what they are saying is definitely
*not* what they are thinking.  If any love --even in its basest form--can be
said to be an element in that scene, it is certainly not "at first sight."
 
John Mucci
GTE VisNet

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