ABSTRACT
In William Shakespeare's Henry IV Part One, for example, Henry's rival Hotspur describes his sexual exploits as to "tilt with lips", deploying the language of jousting to describe erotic encounters with female genitalia. "Make Love, Not War" refuses Henry's logic and celebrates those who stay at home. If he wants to say that fighting at Agincourt gives the soldier his "manhood," the peace activist in contrast says that fighting gets in the way of a more robust form of sexuality for those who embrace peace and peace-making. In the poem Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare plays on the well-known phrase amor vincit omnia, love conquers all, as he dramatizes the power of the goddess of love, Venus, over a young man who prefers hunting and killing wild animals to love-making. Looking across Shakespeare's work, he does seem as vexed about the intersections of love and war as Venus is when the poem ends.
