With Valentine’s Day upon us, the month of February is one where love is always on the mind (and hearts). Nobody knows this feeling better than William Shakespeare did, the playwright and poet most commonly associated with his great knowledge of love. 

In Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says, “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep. The more I give to thee, The more I have, for both are infinite.” 

It might as well have been coming from Shakespeare’s mouth himself towards his love for writing, and the impact that it has had on today’s culture and the way we view romance is still prominent.

“I mean he writes about love very often so I do associate him with it,” sophomore Claire Hoekstra said.

While Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays, only four of them were romances, but they were influential enough to put his name and love in the same category, most famously, in Romeo and Juliet, which is read at our school freshman year.

“I think they really loved each other, they’re both willing to risk their lives for each other and I think that is really interesting. I think if someone would willingly risk their lives for another person just to be with them, it’s love,” sophomore Kayden Carlson said.

This time of the year, love is all around, and it’s important to be grateful for the ones we love, and no one reminds us of this like William Shakespeare. 

As he says in his famous Sonnet 116, “Love is not love, Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken.”