ABSTRACT
It is interesting to observe how, from A Lover'sComplaint to Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare, no doubt with varying degrees of seriousness and sometimes, perhaps, almost instinctively, no less than five times associates love with religion. In A Lover'sComplaint, which was definitely ascribed to Shakespeare when it was printed with the Sonnets in 1609 and which, bad though it often is, I think we must regard as his, even if his very earliest poem, the woman making the 'complaint' relates how the young Don Juan who ruined and deserted her declared that she was the only woman he had ever loved, and that he had only pretended to love all the other women who had pursued him, among whom was a nun, with whom
Religious love put out Religion's eye. (1. 250)
When Benvolio offers to show him beauties in comparison with whom his Rosaline will seem a crow, Romeo replies:
When the devout religion of mine eye Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires!
