Shakespeare in Love Love Quotes

How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Shakespeare in Love.

Quote #1

WILL: Henslowe, you have no soul, so how can you understand the emptiness that seeks a soul mate?

This line accomplishes a lot early in the film. It establishes Henslowe as a person who is decidedly not a romantic, and Shakespeare (in case you've never heard of him) as a person who is romantic, and might be in search of a soulmate. We have a feeling he'll find her.

Quote #2

DR. MOTH: So now you are free to love.

WILL: Yet cannot love or write it.

Shakespeare is a mastery of dramatic irony, and it appears that he lived is as well as wrote it. At least he did when he was writing. Here we see that he can create love on the page, but not in his real life.

Quote #3

VIOLA: All the men at court are without poetry. If they look at me they see my father's fortune. I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. […] No, not the artful postures of love, but love that overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable, like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love like there has never been in a play.

Even if Viola weren't played by Gwyneth Paltrow and on the poster, we would know here that she is the romantic soulmate Will is searching for. Her philosophy on what love should be seems to perfectly line up with his.