Is Love Worth Preserving Essay

Is love Worth Preserving Love is a universal feeling or emotion and every human on earth throughout history has experienced in one form or the other. Many plays, drama or stories are surrounded by betrayal, hurt; pain, trials, triumphs, wars, passion, forgiveness, commitment and romance. However In the play â€Å"Sakuntala and The Ring of Recollection† this is a perfect example of what seems to be a more dramatic courtship tragedy. The story portrays romance between king Dusyanta and a sage’s daughter Sakuntala both strive to meet and reconcile the conflicting objectives of Indian life; the struggle to balance the need for power and hierarchy with undeniable feelings of passion. King Dusyanta while hunting in forest happens meet the most perfect and organic of all women his ever seen; Sakuntala a beautiful young lady living in a hermitage in the forest. King Dusyanta overwhelmed with Feelings and love, so strong that he desired sakuntala as a wife immediately ignoring his royal duties as king. The king courts her and marries her in a simple ceremony witnessed only by sakuntala’s friends. The king promised to return by offering a ring to signify his commitment. Then Dusyanta leaves for his capital to attend to his royal duties, with the understanding that he will soon return to and take Sakuntala with him for a proper ceremony. Unfortunately, Sakuntala, lost in thoughts of king Dusyanta fails to take notice of Sage Durvasa who comes visiting the hermitage. Angered by this, Durvasa puts a curse on sakuntala that the person she is thinking about will forget her completely. The only remedy to make Dusyanta remember Sakuntala and their marriage is to show him the ring that he had given to Sakuntala. Sakuntala now must go to Dusyanta and show him the ring so that he will again remember her. But unfortunately the ring she is carrying with her fall into a river on her way to Dusyanta and cannot be retrieved. Thus when Sakuntala faces Dusyanta he is unable to recall her. All her pleadings with Dusyanta and efforts to remind him are ineffective in bringing back memories of his commitment. Sakuntala has no alternative but to return. By series of chances the ring that fell in river was found by a fisherman and then presented to Dusyanta, through these he remembers all the past event forgotten. But it is too late by then. Dusyanta is not able to find Sakuntala, who has moved to some other place and has given birth in the meantime to a son, who is named Bharat. Many years later when Bharat is still a child, Dusyanta happens to firs see Bharat playing with a lion cob and then meets Sakuntala and reunited Sakuntala ring of recollection presents the audience with two characters who begin as reasonably autonomous beings but who gradually compromise aspects of their identities in order to complement one another. In doing so, the author suggests that every individual is incomplete without a partner, and he depicts the ideal male and female characters during India’s classical age. Works Cited David, Damrosch, and David L. Pike. The longman Anthopology of world literature, volume A; Sakuntala and the Ring of Recollection. The Ancient world, second edition.