- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
The knight Guigemar has gone hunting in the forest and mortally wounded a white hind, or deer. In the process, Guigemar’s arrow rebounds and pierces his thigh. Suddenly, the dying animal speaks and pronounces this curse on Guigemar.
The significance of the hind’s curse is that it establishes the idea—both here and throughout the Lais—that romantic love is the most devastating “wound” of all. Guigemar’s physical wound thus provides a pretext for, and symbolizes the much greater severity of, the emotional “wound” he’ll receive when he meets the woman who will nurse him back to health. She will also…