A Relief after the Grief: A Comparative study of William Shakespeare’s and Thomas Hardy’s Treatment of Love

Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet could be considered as the tragic love story in its extremist sense. As one reads the play one can witness how cunningly Shakespeare slowly but surely makes certain his audience could savor the sweet taste of a true love yet at the same time taste the bitterness of leaving that true love unfulfilled as well. By doing so, Shakespeare conveys a message that true love is not possible in this mortal realm. But possibly under public pressure Shakespeare might have been left with no choice other than appeasing his audience after a one-year gap by bringing a love comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, milder in nature to alleviate the injuries inflected upon the defeated expectations on the failure of the fulfillment of the true love in the earlier play. In his last comedy which marked Shakespeare’s farewell to stage he still used magic to unite the lovers but later on excluded its use. Thomas Hardy, however, failed to accomplish the fulfillment of love after his fourth well-received novel. As other pessimistic novels followed so did the negative reaction of his society which heightened in his last tragedy forcing him to surrender his pen. This study hopes to shed light upon the process in which Shakespeare used many devices in order to relieve his audience from the earlier tension, yet Thomas Hardy boldly insisted that romantic passion is a dangerous and heartbreaking illusion.

Keywords:

Romeo and Juliet , A Midsummer Night's Dream , The Tempest , Jude the Obscure , love and audience