Flirt and be romantic like SHAKESPEARE 💕🌹💋

If you want to seduce your love interest, you will need more than the overused chat-up lines of today. Who better to turn to than the quintessential master of romance himself, William Shakespeare? In this lesson, I will use romantic lines from some of Shakespeare’s plays to show you how you can woo that special someone. Whether you are writing a letter or card, reciting these lines to your lover atop a balcony, or pasting these same lines to 67 different potential dates for the night in a hookup app, your chances of success will be increased if you use the right words.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi, there, and thank you so much for coming back to engVid with me, Benjamin. Today we are looking at chat-up lines from the pen of William Shakespeare - one of the greatest writers ever of the English language. Who might enjoy this lesson today? Well, the romantics out there, looking to woo and impress their other half; or those with a real interest in the English language, who enjoy Shakespeare's words. Now, we all can understand them with a little bit of help.

So, let's start with Hamlet. Okay? So, Hamlet's been having a bit of a tough time in Denmark; his Dad's been killed by his uncle; the Mom's now going out with the uncle; but he quite fancies this girl called Ophelia. Some people doubt this love, though. What does he say to them?
"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love thee."
Okay, let's have a closer look at this. So, the first thing I notice when I look here is we have a list of: "Do these three things". Now, what we call this is the rule of three, because we've got three similar ideas in a row. So I'll just write that up here. Rule of three. Okay? So it's where you list three things for effect. "Doubt thou", so maybe you've watched my Shakespeare's insult video, and we learnt that "thou" was "you". If you haven't seen that, do check it out. "Doubt you". So: "I don't mind if you doubt that the stars are made of fire", but you'd be a bit silly if you did doubt that. "You can doubt if the sun moves", okay? So: "doth" means "does". Obviously, the sun actually stays still and it's the earth that moves around the sun, but you know, he's a confused young man at this stage in his life. "Doubt truth to be a liar. Doubt truth to be a liar", so what we're doing is we're kind of turning truth into a human being, and saying: "You're a liar, truth. You're lying." Okay? Kind of strange, but as I said, he's a confused young lad. "But never doubt I love thee." So, basically, what he's saying: "You can say anything you like; you can say that I'm talking total nonsense, but the only thing I'm totally sure of is that I love thee." Okay? Thanks, Hamlet.

Now, from a comedy, Twelfth Night:
"If music be the food of love, play on. If music be the food of love, play on."
You may have heard of that before. Let's try and get a deeper understanding of this. What is being used here is a metaphor. Okay? It's a comparison. So, what's being compared? We've got love and we have food. So, let's draw a box of sandwiches. Let's have a prawn sandwich in there. Prawn, mm-mm. Okay. "If music be the food of love, play on." So, what he's saying is: "Music helps love to grow." Okay? So let's draw a crotchet there. That's a crotchet. Okay? So, food helps us to grow. The music is going to help love. So: "Music is like the food to love. Let's have more food, more music; let's have a good time." Okay? "If music be the food of love, play on."

A Midsummer Night's Dream:
"Love looks not with the eyes,
but with the mind, and therefore is
wingèd Cupid painted blind."
"Love looks not with the eyes", so what's being said here is that... I can't remember which character said this; probably Lysander or Demetrius, but they're saying: "It's not... I'm not just liking you for your looks. It's not just about the looks; I really like you as a person." Okay? But obviously we're saying it in a slightly more complicated way. "Love looks not with the eyes. I don't just fancy you because you're pretty-I don't just like you because you're handsome-but because of the mind, and therefore is wingèd Cupid". So, Cupid is the Roman god of love. So, god of love. Yeah? When we see pictures of Cupid, they can't see anything; they're just there firing their arrows to decide who falls in love with who. So: "I love you because of the things you say."

Romeo and Juliet:
"Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"
"I love thee, I love but thee,
with a love that shall not die;
till the sun grows cold
and the stars grow old."
I love the rhyme here of "cold" and "old"; it's so simple, but so effective. Okay. Okay, so again, "thee" means "you". "I love you, I love but thee". […]