The Symptoms of Love

Abstract

I’ll begin by quoting Shakespeare’s Rosalind, when she rebukes Orlando for looking so unlike a lover. The proper marks of a lover, she insists, are:

A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; … a beard neglected, which you have not — but I pardon you for that;… Then your hose should be ungartered, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man: you are rather point-device in your accoutrements. (As You Like It, III, ii)

This was originally delivered as the address at the annual meeting of the Jane Austen Society in Chawton, Hampshire, on 16 July 1977. A version of the paper is published in the society’s annual Report.