Aspects of Love in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Aspects of Love in Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

There are many different views on love in the play. Love portrayed by

different characters at different times in the play, some characters

show more than one type of love.

The first type of love shown is sexual or physical love. It is the

most basic form of love; this is shown by Sampson and Gregory it

reduces everything to sex. Sampson says, "I will push Montague's men

from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall"; this means that he

will rape them because of his hate for the Montague's not for the love

of the woman. Sampson's friend, Gregory, also shows this form of love.

He says, "Draw thy tool" this can be seen as taking out of the sword

or taking out of the genitalia. Later in the play the Nurse also talks

about love in its most basic form. She tries to comfort Juliet when

Romeo gets banished by saying, " his face be better than any man's".

She is concentrating on the looks of the man rather than his

personality. Mercutio also displays this view on love; he refers to

women as " pale hard-hearted wench" and "if love be rough with you, be

rough with love". These statements imply that in love you should treat

them mean to keep them keen and that all women are evil and do not

care about men emotions. The Nurse also shows this when she jokes that

"Women grow by men" and moments later is encouraging Juliet to view

Paris sympathetically and "seek happy nights to happy days".

Mercutio's conversations frequently employ bawdy references that

indicate a broad view of the relations between the sexes.

The second type of love we encounter is infatuation. This is

experienced by Romeo for Rosaline at the beginning of the play. This

infatuation is the unrequited love that is found by Romeo, he loves

Rosaline but she does not love him because she is about to go into a

nunnery. He understands that Rosaline is not to be "hit with Cupid's