SOURCE: Introduction to Love and Society in Shakespearean Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Content, University of Delaware Press, 1985, pp. 13-29.

In the following essay, Levin contends that in his romantic comedies, Shakespeare explores the conflict between romantic and antiromantic values, such as the opposition between love and the desire for fortune. Levin stresses that this conflict was apparent in Elizabethan society and in other literature of the time, and that in part the tension deals with the perceived failure of Elizabethan society to live up to the values extolled in medieval romance.

The Stage is more beholding to Love, then the Life of Man.

Francis Bacon, Essays

Love gives . . . counsel
 To inquire for him 'mongst unambitious shepherds,
 Where dowries were not talk'd of: and sometimes
 'Mongst quiet kindred, that had nothing left
 By their dead parents.
 John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi

Along with As You...