Love and hate can be shown in various ways throughout poems like Robert Browning’s and the William Shakespeare. In my opinion, I believe that Robert Browning and William Shakespeare present love and hate similarly. They both show love and who how it can be affected so easily by hate in one way. To back up my argument I will show quotes from the Robert Browning poems and the Julius Caesar.

Julius Caesar which is written by Shakespeare is a play that is known by many that showed us how mutual relationships can ruin a leadership. Brutus was always cared for by Caesar and Brutus always saw Caesar. Caesar was spitefully slayed by the conspirators fairly early on in the play. He was murdered because of his ambitions but for the love of Rome as said by Brutus in his colloquies. The conspirators were worried that Caesar was going to become too powerful and use the citizens as dolls as he sits in the rafters controlling them. We know this from Brutus’s colloquies after he killed him in Act 3 Scene 2. Brutus stated ‘had you rather Caesar were living, and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all freemen?’ This quote portrays his love for Rome to the readers and the people of Rome. However we also know that part of Brutus did love him but his love for Rome overshadowed his love for Caesar and Brutus hated the way that the people of Rome were being treated which caused Brutus to make his decision.

This is the scene of Caesar death Shakespeare uses Caesar to show the final feeling of love from Brutus. ‘Et tu, Brute? – Then fall, Caesar!’ Caesar  asked Brutus this after the Conspirators struck their spiteful blows. wIf Brutus wants to deliver the final blow, then he is willing to die at his feet. From this one show of love from Brutus, we can observe his love for Rome and Caesar but also the hatred of his ambition and ideologies. This is why I believe that Shakespeare uses just one way to show how love can be affected by hate.

In my opinion,Browning’s writings show love and hate in a similar way to Shakespeare.‘Porphyria’s Lover’ is a poem that shows a mixture of combined emotions, including love and hate. The poem is set in a mysterious but little house near a small body of water. A man was resting in his chair when the most beautiful girl named Porphyria gently stepped into the room from the chilly outdoors. She sat next to the man and was portraying her utmost love for him. We as the readers know that the man has the same amount of love as she does,however the man’s love for Porphyria was too much, he was scared that he may not be able to keep her all for himself as she was so beautiful. ‘For love of her, and all in vain.’ he decided on the place to choke her with her own locks of long hair so he could have her forever.

‘Let death be felt and the proof remain: Brand, burn up, bite into its grace— He is sure to remember her dying face ‘ Browning uses the narrator to express harsh verbs such as ‘Brand, burn up, bite into its grace’ to allow the reader to develop a vivid imagery of hate. The  verbs describe to us that she wants this horrible death, to demolish all her “grace.” Not only because she wants to hurt her, but because she wants her former lover to remember his new girlfriend’s agonised “dying face.” The connotations of the verbs are clear – they bring a sense of evilness and hate and you would expect a quite cold-hearted person to exclaim these things. These verbs used, create a vivid imagery of hate and pure evil to the audience because they connote very harsh meanings of death, and when she states to ‘bite into its grace’ it means that she wants the girlfriend’s elegance to be ravaged and poisoned. However, some may argue the fact that there is love and hate shown but there is unrequited love shown towards the narrator. This is because the narrator wants pain to be felt to her former lover by creating a poison to kill his new girlfriend, although she still loves him there is less love shown towards the narrator.

A poem also written by Browning called “A women’s last word”,In this poem Browning shows a slightly off structure from his usual poems,in this case hate leads to love instead of visa versa, in a women’s last word hate has led to love. In the poem the women is trying to turn all the hate standing in-between her counterpart to become love and grow. Their is a quote in the poem , “what so wild as words are? I and thou in debate, as birds are, Hawks on bough! See the creature stalking while we speak! Hush and hide the talking, cheek on cheek!”. The speaker is making clear to her counterpart how all their arguments and disagreements are as wild as birds are, “hawk on bough”.

All of Browning’s poetry is written about love and they are all portrayed as dramatic love ie;soliloquies, they also are just showing love from a single point of view and exploring the extremities of love and the points that it can take us to in life. In Julius Caesar love is also shown in the same way and Shakespeare shows us how when people are pressured love can become juxtaposed , turning it into a black and white  situation, where Brutus has to decide between his love of Caesar, and his love for Rome.  The language of the poem may confuse some people in this context because the subjective point of view means that that the reader or watcher realizes that love and hate are too complex to easily categorise.

In conclusion I believe that even though there is a time gap between Browning and Shakespeare both authors use a very similar way to show the themes of love and hate through the writings of poems and plays. Both authors have went into depth in order to explore the great extremes of these two emotions and the language they have use has had a large impact on the audience in a way where some sort of imagery is portrayed. Although, they both came from completely different eras and the themes of love and hate were both perceived differently due to the morality they lived by, the two authors used language and literary devices to push the boundaries of the concepts of love and hate taking us into a sphere of challenging our assumptions about these themes.