Exploring Love and Lust in Romeo & Juliet

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Recommended: Romantic love in romeo and juliet

Mason Webb
Mrs. Holt
Romeo & Juliet Final Paper
21 April 2017
Comparison of Love
The love that Romeo has for Rosaline compared to Juliet is that he really isn’t truly in love with Rosaline.
At the beginning of the play, Romeo is pining for the love of a woman named Rosaline. He has more of an infatuation with Rosaline and because of his lack of maturity, he fails to actually love her but instead insults her by offering to pay her money for coitus. Instead of feeling love for Rosaline he feels lust. The contrast between his feelings is vast - it could be seen that Romeo is still too immature to know the difference between love and lust as he falls in and out of love so easily. He falls for Juliet so quickly. In contrast to this he does explain …show more content…

However when Romeo falls in love with Juliet, he only speaks of her extolling her and not moaning of his love “sickness” a he had been when he supposedly claimed to be in love with Rosaline. He speaks of Rosaline as being “One fairer than my love? The all-seeing love Sun Ne’er saw her match since the first the world begun. But when he meets Juliet, he explains her as the sun itself, “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun, arise fair sun and kill the envious moon.” This shows that he loves Juliet more than he does Rosaline as Romeo mentions it himself, contradicting himself in Act 1 scene 5 when he first catches a glimpse of Juliet, he says "Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night." And in Act 1 scene 1 he says "In sadness, cousin, I do love a woman." As he knew Rosaline was also a Capulet, but, due to Romeo's love for Juliet and Juliet having a direct link to Sir Capulet, he worries. "Is she a Capulet? O dear account! My life is my foe's debt." Another last point is that, while talking about Rosaline in Act 1 up to scene 5, he always talks about love "Alas that love, whose view is muffled still" and "Is love a tender thing? It is too rough." As when he talks about Juliet, he does not talk about love at all but just

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