Seven Shakespeare quotes to make your Valentine swoon

Unsure how to stir the soul of your lover this Valentine’s Day? Run out of ways to say: “I love you”? Searching for sweet nothings to whisper? Don’t worry, William Shakespeare has got you covered. Here’s seven killer quotes to suit every romantic mood and moment.

1. WHEN EXPRESSING THE POWER OF YOUR LOVE

If you’re seeking the words to express the strength of your affections, why not go straight to the top and ask the goddess of love herself, Venus. Shakespeare’s steamy narrative poem Venus and Adonis was a smash hit in Elizabethan England, and this line was one of many that stole readers’ hearts: “Love is a spirit all compact of fire”. In other words, love is lighter than air and cannot be held in your hands – but it’s also very real. It burns. It’s dangerous. And like a spirit, it’s intoxicating.

(Phew! All that from a single line of a 1,200-line poem. Imagine the effect if you read the entire poem to your Valentine.)

2. WHEN CONFESSING YOUR TRUE FEELINGS

You know those people who rub you up the wrong way? Whatever they say or do gets right up your nose. Until one day you realise – they’re not only infuriating, but also infatuating. Gah! You’re crazy about them!

But how do you to fess up?

Beatrice and Benedick have the answer. In Much Ado About Nothing, they spend half the play insulting one another, before reluctantly admitting the truth to themselves and to one another. Benedick’s line “I do love nothing in the world so well as you – is not that strange?” is good but, as always, Beatrice bests him: “I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.”

Benedick is so bowled over by her words that within seconds Beatrice has talked him into killing his friend Claudio!

(This Valentine’s Day, savour a night of romance beside Sydney’s glittering harbour watching Kenneth Branagh’s Much Ado About Nothing on our big screen. Grab some popcorn or a choc top and join us at 6.30pm on Wednesday 14 February. Full details and tickets here.)

3. WHEN LOVING YOUR ENEMY

If Beatrice and Benedick’s 180-degree turn doesn’t light your candle, then maybe these words from Aufidius to his nemesis Coriolanus might instead. As Stanley Wells points out in his book Shakespeare, Sex, and Love, the two warriors begin as vicious enemies on the battlefield, but later they embrace as Aufidius utters these lines, loaded with homoeroticism:

Here I clip

The anvil of my sword, and do contest

As hotly and as nobly with thy love

As ever in ambitious strength I did

Contend against thy valour. Know thou first,

I loved the maid I married; never man

Sighed truer breath. But that I see thee here,

Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart

Than when I first my wedded mistress saw

Bestride my threshold.

4. WHEN YOU’RE REUNITED

As Juliet pointed out, when you’re in love “parting is such sweet sorrow”. But the flipside to saying goodbye is the elation of being reunited with your beloved. To make your lover know how desperately you’ve missed them, try out Sebastian’s words to his adored Antonio in Twelfth Night: “How have the hours racked and tortured me / Since I have lost thee!”

5. WHEN IT’S TIME TO TURN UP THE HEAT

Audiences went weak at the knees last year when Tomáš Kantor played and sang O Mistress Mine in Twelfth Night. Their falsetto, coupled with Sarah Blasko’s lilting music, perfectly matched Shakespeare’s seductive lyric, which urges lovers to make out now because you never know what is around the corner. If you’re feeling amorous, read the second verse of this song to your beloved – and watch them melt:

What is love? ‘tis not hereafter.

Present mirth hath present laughter:

What’s to come is still unsure.

In delay there lies no plenty:

Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty:

Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

6. WHEN IT’S SO GOOD THAT IT HURTS

Pages and pages of Antony and Cleopatra are devoted to describing the alluring beauty of the Egyptian Queen. Antony is a mighty Roman ruler, but Cleopatra totally conquers his heart. Their adventures on the battlefield are legendary – but that’s nothing compared to their adventures in the bedroom. So, if you want to walk on the wild side with your lover this Valentine’s Day, unleash your inner Cleo and suggest “A lover’s pinch, / Which hurts, and is desired.”

7. WHEN TYING THE KNOT

When the cast of our new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream flicked through their scripts, they found quotes apt for every conceivable romantic situation: forbidden love, infidelity, break ups, make ups, and carnal mischief (as Dame Judy Dench quips in her new book, “The play is full of sex… All the fairies should be humping each other throughout.”)

And if you’re seeking words for the most romantic day of your life – your wedding day – these tender lines from Lysander would be the icing on your cake:

My heart unto yours is knit

So that but one heart we can make of it;

Two bosoms interchained with an oath;

So then two bosoms and a single troth.

See our production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Sydney Opera House from 2 March as it begins its national tour to over 20 Australian venues. Fast, funny and quick as a shadow, this is A Midsummer Night's Dream reimagined.