Oberon is the king of all the fairies who is feuding with his wife Titania.

In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena says: "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind."

Macbeth says: "Life ... is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Osric is the foolish courtier who summons Hamlet to his duel with Laertes.

In Twelfth Night, Orsino, Duke of Illyria, says, "If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die."

In Love's Labour's Lost, the Spanish braggart Don Adriano de Armado says: "Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love. Yet was Samson so tempted, and he had an excellent strength; yet was Solomon so seduced, and he had a very good wit. Cupid's butt-shaft is too hard for Hercules' club; and therefore too much odds for a Spaniard's rapier."

Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship, but Petruchio tempers her with various psychological torments until she becomes a compliant and obedient bride.

Pompey, a clown and servant to Mistress Overdone, is described by Harold Bloom as "a triumph of Shakespeare's art, a vitalistic presence who refuses to be bound by any division between comedy and tragedy."

In the guise of a boy, Imogen adopts the name "Fidele," meaning "faithful."

Troilus and Cressida ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how one is meant to respond to the characters.