Lose all to keep our oaths!

Love's Labor's Lost

Berowne:
Let us once lose our oaths to find ourselves,
Or else we lose ourselves to keep our oaths.
It is religion to be thus forsworn,
For charity itself fulfills the law,
And who can sever love from charity?

King:
Saint Cupid, then, and, soldiers, to the field!

Longaville:
Now to plain delaing. Lay these glozes by.
Shall we resolve to woo these girls of France?

King:
And win them, too...

Here we are again burning the town with fire!  At what price do we keep our goal and our dreams?


The Tempest

Prospero lost in is study:
I, thus neglecting worldly ends, all dedicated
To closeness and the bettering of my mind
With that which, but by being so retired,
O'er-prized all popular rate, in my false brother
Awaked an evil nature; and my trust,
Like a good parent, did beget of him
A falsehood in its contrary as great
As my trust was; which had indeed no limit,
A confidence sans bound.

Lost in study Prospero lost his kingdom power and all, his library was dukedom large enough.

Won as towns with Fire

Love's Labor's Lost Act I

So study evermore is overshot.
While it doth study to have what it would,
It doth forget to do the ting it should.
And when it hath the thing it hunteth most,
'Tis won as towns with fire--so won, so lost.




Here Shakespeare is using a powerful technique called personification he is giving the abstract idea of studying a body to go hunting and an army to burn and over take a town. This technique gives amplifies the meaning and power of Berowne's argument, that the King and his followers are overdoing their oath to study for three years. It also allows for a timeless application of the truth: to much of a good thing.

For example:
Study can miss it's target? Study is used to reach some aim, some goal, wither it be to speak fluently, to obtain a job, to gain understanding, or to win a girl. Eventually study will obtain it's goal like a hunter it's prey, but if the goal was to have the prey alive, study should have been a trapper. Studies goal, like an army, could be to over take a beautiful city, but in the anxiety and fervor of battle the army burns the town to win it. O it's won, but it's ash!

I, like an army like a tyrant, have pillaged through school. I have ran over every friend, roommate, extra curricular activity, and career fair in the name of study! If it wasn't directly related to school it was burned! To this day some of my friends will say, "Its good to hand out with you before to get buried in your work!" How many times i have set the town ablaze only to realize the goal was reached but with flame. To walk the streets of a dream only to have them smell and look of ash is no dream. Life is about balance and dreams. When we set the dream as the only goal we can loose perspective of what it is we really want, what is really needed.

Take time to smell the roses! Build bridges and then never burn them. Enjoy life on the way to the dream and if needs be change it! What wilt thou have pay the price and take it! BUT NOTE THE PRICE!