Exile, Deception and Magic Revelation: A Thematic Exploration of Shakespeare’s Pastorals of Love

Though the theme of love by no means gains the very popularity among Shakespeare’s works, he does not simply relate a story of romance, the affection between male or female, but entirely every aspect of human love (the parental love, the brotherly love, the sisterly love as well as the friendly love). That is, love does exactly have been dissected into a multilayered pyramid in his hands. Exemplified in As You Like It , The Tempest , The Winter’s Tale , Shakespeare takes exile as a kind of precondition, getting the heroes and heroines out of the court into the forest, island and countryside with a disguised appearance and identity which performs as some means of deception, more or less casting magic as the promotive power in order to explore the extensive knowledge of love. In doing so, love then is endowed not only a purified but also a unified function and finally becomes the symbol of harmony.