<romantic love is nearly absent in this play, except as bawd. It is taken over by justice/God’s love. Most of the references to sight in this play have to do with seeing justice “correctly” or reasoning “correctly. Still…>
Duke
Love talks with better knowledge, and knowledge with dearer love.
III.ii.143
Achilles
What are you reading?
Ulysses
A strange fellow here
Writes me that man, how dearly ever parted,
How much in having, or without or in,
Cannot make boast to have that which he hath,
Nor feels not what he owes but by reflection;
As when his virtues shining upon others
Heat them, and they retort that heat again
To the first giver.
Achilles
This is not strange, Ulysses.
The beauty that is borne here in the face
The bearer knows not, but commends itself
To others’ eyes; nor doth the eye itself,
That most pure spirit of sense, behold itself,
Not going from itself; but eye to eye opposed
Salutes each other with each other’s form;
For speculation turns not to itself
Till it hath traveled and is married there
Where it may see itself. This is not strange at all.
Ulysses
I do not strain at the position —
It is familiar — but at the author’s drift;
Who in his circumstance expressly proves
That no man is the lord of anything —
Though in and of him there be much consisting —
Till he communicate his parts to others;
Nor doth he of himself know them for aught
Till he behold them formed in th’applause
Where they’re extended; who, like an arch, reverb’rate
The voice again, or, like a gate of steel
Fronting the sun, receives and renders back
His figure and his heat.
III.iii.95-123
Viola
I left no ring with her. What means this lady?
Fortune forbid my outside have not charmed her.
She made good view of me; indeed, so much
That, as methought, her eyes had lost her tongue,
For she did speak in starts distractedly.
She loves me sure; the cunning of her passion
Invites me in this churlish messenger.
None of my lord’s ring? Why, he sent her none.
I am the man. If it be so, as ’tis,
Poor lady, she were better love a dream.
Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness
Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.
How easy is it for the proper false
In women’s waxen hearts to set their forms!
II.iii.17-30
Hamlet
This was your husband. Look you now what follows.
Here is your husband, like a mildewed ear
Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love, for at your age
The heydey in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the judgment, and what judgment
Would step from this to this? Sense sure you have,
Else could you not have motion, but sure that sense
Is apoplexed, for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne’er so thralled
But it reserved some quantity of choice
To serve in such a difference. What devil was’t
That thus hath cozened you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
III.iv.63-81
Rosalind
‘Tis not her glass, but you, that flatters her,
And out of you she sees herself more proper
Than any of her lineaments can see her.
III.v.54-6
Brutus
No, Cassius, for the eye sees not itself
But by reflection, by some other things.
Cassius
‘Tis just;
And it is very much lamented Brutus,
That you have no such mirrors as will turn
Your hidden worthiness into your eye,
That you might see your shadow. I have heard
Where many of the best respect in Rome–
Except immortal Caesar–speaking of Brutus,
And groaning underneath this age’s yoke,
Have wished that noble Brutus had his eyes.
Brutus
Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius,
That you would have me seek into myself
For that which is not in me?
Cassius
Therefor good Brutus, be prepared to hear.
And since you know you cannot see yourself
So well as by reflection, I , your glass,
Will modestly discover to yourself
That of yourself which you yet know not of.
I.ii. 54-72
King
If thou canst love a fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth sunburning, that never looks in his glass for love of anything he sees there, let thine eye be thy cook.
V.ii.146-9
Benedick
Your niece regards me with an eye of favor.
Leonato
That eye my daughter leant her. ‘Tis most true.
Benedick
And I do with an eye of love requite her.
V.4.22-24
Falstaff
Now, the hot-blooded gods assist me! Remember, Jove, thou wast a bull for thy Europa: love set on thy horns. O powerful love, that in some respects makes a beast a man; in some other, a man a beast. You were also, Jupiter, a swan for the love of Leda. O omnipotent love, how near the god drew to the complexion of a goose! A fault done first in the form of a beast — O Jove, a beastly fault! — and then another fault in the semblance of a fowl.
V.v.2-10.
Prince
Coming to look on you, thinking you dead
And dead almost, my liege, to think you were,
I spake unto this crown as having sense,
And thus upbraided it: “The care on thee depending
Hath fed upon the body of my father.
Therefore, thou best of gold art worst of gold.
Other, less fine in carat, is more precious,
Preserving life in medicine potable,
But thou, most fine, most honored, most renowned,
Hast eat thy bearer up.”
IV.v.155-164
Dancing Young Men From High Windows 