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Romantic love is the central thematic concern of Paper 1 Section A, and Shakespeare explores it with extraordinary range and complexity across the set plays. This lesson examines how Shakespeare dramatises the experience of falling in love, declarations of love, courtship conventions, and the relationship between romantic love and other forces — power, family, society, and selfhood. Understanding these patterns across all four plays will enable you to write comparatively and analytically, demonstrating the breadth of knowledge examiners reward.
Shakespeare inherits the literary convention of love at first sight from Petrarchan and courtly love traditions but subjects it to dramatic scrutiny.
Unusually for Shakespeare, the audience does not witness Othello and Desdemona falling in love. Their courtship has already happened when the play begins, and we learn about it retrospectively through Othello's account to the Senate:
"She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them." (Othello, 1.3.168–69)
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