Love At First Sight/Theatre
Examples of Love At First Sight in Theatre include:
Shakespeare
- Romeo and Juliet are perhaps the most famous example. Spoiler alert: It doesn't end well.
- In Measure for Measure, this happens to the antagonist, Angelo, after he first meets the protagonist, Isabella.
- More happily, in As You Like It, Orlando and Rosalind, and later Oliver and Celia, fall in love at first sight. The trope gets lampshaded and even deconstructed, but it's ultimately shown in a positive light.
- In The Taming of the Shrew, Lucentio falls in love with Bianca at first sight. His servant, Tranio, lampshades it.
"I pray, sir, tell me, is it possible |
Other works
- Played sort-of straight in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street between Johanna and Anthony, the latter of whom expresses his feelings repeatedly in a supposedly romantic song that sounds a lot like something John Hinckley Jr. would sing to Jodie Foster. Of course, this is Stephen Sondheim, so the ridiculousness is also parodied in "Kiss Me", a song about the two running away from Judge Turpin before he forces Johanna into marriage. This little ditty features such lines as "I knew I'd be with you one day, even not knowing who you were" with Johanna's expression becoming momentarily confused as to how precisely this guy is the love of her life when she's literally only just met him, a fact underlined by the later line that clearly states (even though they're eloping) that she doesn't even know his name.
- Under the circumstances, Johanna is being fairly practical. Anthony offers her a way out of marrying Judge Turpin, and she accepts it. After all, she doesn't have a lot of options. Besides, Anthony is quite possibly the first young man she's ever met. Naturally she's interested in him. Her desperation, loneliness, and curiosity might not equal love, of course; she might be dressing up her feelings to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.
- The Judge Turpin falls in lust at first sight for Lucy.
- Although it's a staple of the original fairytale, it's perhaps even more pronounced in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical of Cinderella - in the 1957 version, Jon Cypher looks like he's just been hit with a very large truck, and Paolo Montalban in the '97 edition looks like the floor has just dropped out from underneath him. Somehow, both of them actually manage to make it believable, too. The 1960's version averts this though.
- Receives a Take That in Cyrano De Bergerac:
Roxane: Well, I love him. That is all Oh--and I never saw him anywhere except the Comédie. |
- Me and My Dick has a subversion. Dick and Miss Cooter fall in love at first touch when Joey and Sally hug too close.
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