Cupid is a knavish lad!

DO'S & DONT'S for Valentine's Day

I think we can all agree that Shakespeare has a lot to say on the subject of love.

And on Cupid.

Cupid’s random arrows cause mayhem and wild passions, as Puck rightly notes:

“Cupid is a knavish lad, thus to make poor females mad.”

MND 3.2.

Puck causes a fair amount of knavish chaos himself, squirting the magic flower-juice into the wrong lovers’ eyes.

This love-potion flower was also created by Cupid, when one of his arrows misfired and landed on the “milk-white” flower, “now purple with love’s wound” and mischievously able to cause anyone “to madly dote upon the next live creature that it sees.”

MND 2.2.

This business of love and Cupid is pretty dangerous.

We mortals can be utterly helpless as our affections and passions crash about, our insecurities knock our equilibrium and our inability to navigate the course of true love which “never did run smooth” is quite staggering.

So here are DO'S & DONT'S for Valentine’s Day, according to Sweet Will.

believe in love!

Witty, clever Berowne calls love “a Hercules,” supremely powerful.

In Love’s Labours Lost he and his three eligible chums make a deeply rash vow to spend three years living lives of intellectual self-improvement and having nothing to do with those dreadful distractions, women.

At which point four gorgeous gals enter the stage.

Letters, secrets and confusion ensue until, finally, the chaps surrender and everyone gets engaged.

Berowne makes the case for love in a cracking speech, arguing that it is love, not study, that will make them better men.

The whole thing is a beautiful explanation of the importance and reward of love, which:

“Courses as swift as thought in every power,

And gives to every power a double power...

It adds a precious seeing to the eye;

A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind;

A lover's ears will hear the lowest sound…

Love's feeling is more soft and sensible

Than are the tender horns of cockled snails…”

LLL 4.3.

Only Shakespeare could make snails' horns romantic!

seize the day!

Valentine’s Day is a chance to take a deep breath and declare your feelings.

Twelfth Night’s Viola is stuck in a male disguise whilst watching the chap she aches for, Orlando, pine for another woman.

“She never told her love,

But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,

Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,

And with a green and yellow melancholy

She sat like patience on a monument,

Smiling at grief.”

TN 2.4.

Not speaking up, Shakespeare cautions, will eat away at you, steal your looks and well-being, until you are left just a mournful shell.

Feste croons to us in "O Mistress mine where are you roaming?" not to hang about and let love pass us by:

“What is love? ‘Tis not hereafter:

Present mirth hath present laughter.

What’s to come is still unsure.

In delay there lies no plenty,

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”

TN Act 2.3.

So what are you waiting for? Get on with it...

give love a little push!

Interfere with your friends’ love lives?

Hmm.

Maybe.

Much Ado’s Beatrice & Benedick spat continuously until their friends take matters into their own hands and trick them into believing that each one loves the other, whereupon Benedick enthusiastically proclaims “I will be horribly in love with her.” (MAAN 2.2.)

This is dangerous territory, meddling with others’ lives, but it seems to work out ok here, and certainly produces some of the finest romantic lines. More of those in a moment…

be cruel!

Let’s have no fake valentines sent to trick and tease. What may seem hilarious in the planning can be truly devastating for the target.

Malvolio in Twelfth Night may be a pompous, supercilious kill-joy, but the antics of the alcohol-fuelled merrymakers Sir Toby, Maria, Feste and Sir Andrew utterly humiliate him. Dropping a fake letter from the lady of the house, Olivia, in his path, the poor chap falls hook, line and sinker for their deceit:

“I do not now fool myself, to let imagination jade me; for every reason excites to this, that my lady loves me…I thank my stars I am happy. I will be strange, stout, in yellow stockings, and cross-gartered…Jove, I thank thee: I will smile; I will do everything that thou wilt have me.”

TN 2.5.

His appalling mincing and gurning as he tries to play the lover is fabulously comic but reduces him to near madness. Beware this level of cruelty:

“I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”

TN 5.1.

write bad poetry!

“I pray you, mar no more trees with writing love-songs in their barks.”

AYLI 3.2.

Orlando, in love at first sight with Rosalind, writes reams of poetry, hangs verses in the trees and carves his love for Rosalind in their barks, to the extreme amusement/irritation of the other Arden forest-dwellers.

Actors playing Rosalind invariably read out these rhymes with varying degrees of mockery:

“From the east to western Ind

No jewel is like Rosalind.

Her worth being mounted on the wind,

Through all the world bears Rosalind...

...Let no face be kept in mind

But the fair of Rosalind."

AYLI 3.2.

The fool, Touchstone, equally mocks these doggerel verses, pronouncing that "Truly, the tree yields bad fruit.”

Therefore...

keep it simple and honest!

Confession time. I have, many moons ago, quoted Juliet in a Valentine:

“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,

My love as deep. The more I give to thee,

The more I have, for both are infinite.”

R&J 2.2.

It worked out ok because he knew I was a Shakespeare nut, but it is a bit 'frilly'

for general use.

I recommend the uncluttered declarations that go straight from one heart to the other, an emotional arrow from you to your beloved.

Here are some stunners, kicking off with a few from Much Ado's Beatrice and Benedick:

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you"

4.1.

“I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest”

4.1.

“I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes”

5.2.

A sprinkling of magical lines from other plays:

"One half of me is yours, the other half yours—

Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours,

And so all yours!"

MOV 3.2.

"Love sought, is good; but given unsought, is better"

TN 3.1.

"I do love thee. Therefore go with me."

MND 3.1.

"Hear my soul speak:

The very instant that I saw you, did

My heart fly to your service."

T 3.1.

"I would not wish any companion in the world but you."

T 3.1.

“Thee will I love, and with thee lead my life.”

CE 3.2.

And finally

hedge your bets!

When the merry wives compare the love letters they've received from Falstaff -

MISTRESS FORD: Why, this is the very same; the very hand, the very words. What doth he think of us?

MISTRESS PAGE: Nay, I know not...Let's be revenged on him.

MWOW 2.1.

- there's a salutary lesson for all who would send duplicate valentines to more than one target. Just focus on one at a time, else you are asking to be beaten, humiliated and chucked in the river.

So there you have it.

Seize the day and keep it honest and simple.

The flutter of Cupid's wings is all around at this time of year.

"...when love speaks, the voice of all the gods

Make heaven drowsy with the harmony.”...

LLL 4.3.

Speak from the heart and see what happens.

"Jack shall have Jill,

Nought shall go ill,

The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well."

MND 3. 2.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!