Silvius is a character who we first meet in the play in
Act II scene 4. He is a young shepherd who is overwhelmed by his feelings of love for
Phoebe and is shown to be completely obsessed by his thoughts of her. Note how he
describes his love to Corin, arguing that Corin could not possibly have loved if he has
not felt the same sort of all-consuming love:
Or if that hast not broke from
company
Abruptly as my passion now makes
me,
Thou has not loved.
O
Phoebe, Phoebe,
Phoebe!
Although he had
planned to buy the cottage that Corin's master owned, such practical concerns have been
swept away by his love for Phoebe. However, in spite of his love for Phoebe, Silvius is
shown to be treated harshly by the object of his affection as every attempt to draw
close to her is spurned. Silvius is presented as being a conventional character in the
play representing a conventional lover trying to express his affections through the
norms of courtly love. His speech is dominated by hyperbole and unrealistic descriptions
of Phoebe, being blind to the reality of her appearance and looks. Likewise he appears
to deliberately enjoy in a kind of masochistic way the terrible manner in which his love
treats him:
So holy and so perfect is my
love,
And I in such a poverty of
grace,
that I shall think it a most plenteous
crop
To glean the broken ears after the
man
That the main harvest reaps. Loose now and
then
A scattered smile, and that I'll live
upon.
Shakespeare in Silvius
seems to be presenting us with a stock pastoral character, who, in accordance with
pastoral literature, seems to be more in love with the feeling of being in love than the
person he claims to be in love with.
No comments:
Post a Comment