Monday 14 May 2012

Romeo and Juliet- Love and Hate

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Love verses hate is one of the major themes in the play and most of the action in the play relates to one, or the other. There are many examples of love in ‘Romeo and Juliet’; Family love, love of friendship, forbidden love and sexual love. However, I will only discuss the three main kinds of love; courtly love, physical love and spiritual love, in this essay. The main importance for the variety of kinds of love is to engage the audience by changing the language and representing each kind of love with bold characters. Shakespeare adds interest to the play by interchanging scenes of different kinds of love to make the dramatic difference between them obvious.


The convection of courtly love originated in the medieval period and was recognised among the Victorian upper class. It involved intense adoration and respect by a man towards a woman who was pure or in some other way unattainable. Romeo suffers the stereotypical symptoms in Act1 Scene1. He is a courtly lover for a girl named Rosaline. Romeo feels lovesick for Rosaline but she does not return the feelings, which makes it typically courtly love. Rosaline is unattainable and refuses Romeo’s love because she has sworn never to marry,


“She hath forsworn to love, and in that vow”


His love for Rosaline may seem deep, but it is truer to say the love is artificial and lacks sincerity and passion. His behaviour involves mooning about on long walks, alone in the morning. However as dawn breaks he confides himself to the dullness of his bedroom,





“Away from light steals home my heavy son.


And private in his chamber pens himself


Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out.”


Romeo also expresses his pain by his melancholic behaviour. He is extremely depressed and shows this by his unnecessary sighing and use of oxymoron’s such as, “O heavy lightness”, “O loving hate”, “bright smoke” and “cold fire”. This is part of the typical courtly love language that the Elizabethan audience would recognise, because in that period courtly love was a common thing among the upper class. Young men thought it to be a challenge to pursue a woman who they knew would deny their love. Benvolio gives young naive Romeo the wise advice to forget Rosaline,


“Be ruled by me, forget to think of her.”


Now I will look at how Shakespeare presents the coarse view of love with the particular interest to the physical aspect of lovemaking. Shakespeare represents this more humorous kind of love through the vulgar characters of the nurse and Mercutcio. The nurse has a coarse, bawdy humour, which is shown in Act 1 Scene , when the nurse makes a certain remark about something her husband once said,


“Yea, dust thou fall upon thy face?


Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,


Wilt thou not Jule?”


He said this once when Juliet was a young girl and was referring to Juliet having sex later on in life. The audience would be entertained by the many crude references to love making which the nurse makes. In the nurse’s view, another good reason for Juliet getting married would be that she might become pregnant,


“No less; nay bigger. Women grow by men.”


This is typical for the vulgar nurse to remark upon. Even though the audience would have been enthralled by the intensity and passion of Romeo and Juliet’s true, spiritual love, they would be amused by the many crude references to physical love in the play. The nurse does not seem to understand the feelings which Romeo and Juliet have for each other and only thinks someone would marry Juliet for her family’s wealth,


“I tell you, he that can lay hold of her


Shall have the chinks.”


Mercutio, like the nurse, also can’t comprehend with their feelings of true love or courtly love because he has not experienced them himself. When Romeo is suffering courtly love for Rosaline, Mercutio is not the slightest bit sympathetic but recommends that Romeo should fight love back, and he will soon defeat it,


“If love be rough with you, be rough with love;


Prick love pricking and you beat love down.”


Mercutio adds humour to the play by making many bawdy remarks about physical love. He uses very vulgar language, especially in Act Scene1 when he is talking about lovemaking, but tries to disguise his bawdy remarks of sex by using fancy language and metaphors.


“To raise a spirit in his mistress’ circle


Of some strange nature, letting it there stand


Till she had laid it and conjured it down;”


In this speech he is pretending to talk of Romeo’s spirit but is in fact talking of sex. Mercutio is also completely insulting towards the nurse in Act Scene4, which the audience would have different views about but would all be very interested. He firstly mocks what she is wearing, and then insults her by calling her fan prettier than her face,


“for her fans the fairer face.”


He then pretends she arouses him and calls her a whore, which is unsurprising of predictable of Mercutio, who is impolite and disrespectful. In this scene the contrast between the polite Romeo and the sarcastic, vulgar Mercutio is made noticeably obvious.


When Romeo meets Juliet, he feels a completely different kind of love to which he felt for Rosaline. He has a true, spiritual connection with Juliet in contrast to the infatuation he had felt for Rosaline.


It is love at first sight for Romeo and Juliet, when Romeo sees her across the crowded room. He praises her with poetic language, which we have not yet heard from young Romeo. He uses similes to describe her beauty,


“It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night


As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear-


Beauty to rich for use, for earth to dear.”


The audience would quickly understand that Romeo is in love with Juliet and that every word he speaks in straight from the heart. He immediately realises that he did not truly love Rosaline,


“Did my heart love till now?”


“For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”


Romeo has decided that, even without talking to Juliet, she is his true love and he does not need to search no longer.


“Forswear it, sight.”


When Romeo and Juliet first speak, their conversation is in the form of a sonnet, a love poem. Their union of minds indicating to the audience they share true, honest spiritual love. Romeo talks to Juliet pretending she is a saint and he is merely a pilgrim. She picks up on this fantasy idea using it to steal a kiss. Their linked minds having fun with words, both eager for one another showing it playfully,


“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?


Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer”


In the famous ‘balcony’ scene we see that Romeo and Juliet’s love has a passionate sexuality, but it remains one of an honest kind.


“Sleep dwell upon there eyes, place in thy breast!


Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest!”


Romeo requests that Juliet will not remain a virgin. Juliet later expresses her passionate response,


“My bounty is as boundless as the sea,


My love as deep; the more I give to thee.


The more I have, for both are infinite.”


This is a powerful, mutual, fulfilling love that the pair wish to honour in marriage. The pair’s passion is conveyed by what they say to each other. They are falling deeper in love with every word that is said. They wish they did not have to leave each other,


“I would I were thy bird”


Even their goodbyes are overdramatically passionate,


“Sweet so would I.


Yet, I should kill thee with much cherishing.


Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow


That I should say good night till it be morrow.”


This is a very tender and emotional scene and the audience would be deeply moved by the young couples passion.


Soon after the marriage things go wrong for Romeo and Juliet. When Romeo murders Tybalt, Juliet is not quite sure what to think.


When Romeo and Juliet next appear in the play together, their conversation is as day breaks,


“It was lark, the herald of the morn”


Romeo also shows the breaking of dawn, when he uses the extravagant language,


“Look, love, what envious streaks.


Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east.”


Their parting is sorrowful. As Juliet looks down from the balcony to Romeo, she has a horrible idea that he looks as though he’s dead in the bottom of a tomb,


“Methinks I see thee, now thou art so law,


As one dead in the bottom of a tomb.


Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.”


Which is coincidently the next place they see each other. The idea of death lurking on Romeo makes Juliet say goodbye as if it were their last. A sense of sorrow is conveyed in this scene and the audience would feel the emotion in the scene surely feeling the sadness themselves. The audience would be very tense by now waiting to discover the mystery that lies ahead for the young couple, trying to work out whether their extraordinary love would last.


Act5 scene brings their lives to an end. Romeo describes the ending of his life as a ship that has tragically crashed upon the rocks,


“Come, bitter conduct, come unsavoury guide,


Thou desperate pilot now at once run on


The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark.”


Romeos farewell to Juliet is very romantic. He once again worships her, like the first time he seen her. Juliet’s farewell to Romeo, although brief, is also moving. Juliet takes Romeos dagger, which she calls a lucky dagger,


“O happy dagger.”


She thinks that because the dagger belonged to Romeo, her husband, her lover, it would do her justice killing her, letting her be once more with Romeo.


The tragic death of the young lovers was sad to an Elizabethan audience, not unexpected. The Elizabethans would have understood that a love as pure as theirs was too perfect. They would not have envisioned Romeo and Juliet growing older together with their love cooling. This way the ending is satisfactory as their love is preserved forever.


Without the other minor kinds of love shown in the play, the main type of love shown between Romeo and Juliet would not seem so true and special. We are able to see the obvious differences now between the three kinds of love that I have wrote about. The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’s message, which I think Shakespeare intended was, even in death, love conquers all.





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