Thoughts from Shakespeare: Love and Madness

It might be a day or two before I put my post together on the quiet (but fun) long weekend just completed in Spring Green. So until then, just some thoughts that are spillovers from seeing two Shakespeare plays while there: "The Winter's Tale", and "Comedy of Errors". One post today, and one tomorrow.



Not long ago I saw a quote by Nietzsche, which I like:

"There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness."

----- Friedrich Nietzsche

I can't help but think that Nietzsche may have been aware of this quote by Pascal from some 250 years prior:

"The heart has reasons that reason cannot know."

----- Blaise Pascal

And this weekend I became aware of another quote that predates Pascal, namely Shakespeare, which Nietszche may have known:

"Love is merely a madness."

----- Rosalind: As You Like It, III, ii.

Seems to me that Nietzsche makes a synthesis of Pascal and Shakespeare in his quote, and I think it's this:

In love, reason and madness meet, and take up residence together in the heart. :) The result is at once sensible and crazy, wise and foolish.

I don't know that I could describe it better.