Expressions of Love in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Romeo is an interesting character, the youngest child of two conflicting families, who has incidentally fallen in love with a woman who is unattainable. It is a tragic tale of romance at first glance but after closer examination it would be more appropriate to describe Romeo’s feelings towards Rosaline as a ‘fashionable visage.’

At that time it was seen that a man would be left heartbroken as an immediate effect of rejection from a woman they loved, this was so popular that it almost became an unofficial rite of passage between adolescence and adulthood. Romeo’s initial melancholic mood shows the shallowness of his performance, which is his love for Rosaline, especially to the audience who would be very much aware of the dramatic irony especially considering that the play is called ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ Romeo appears first in the play to be hypothetically trapped in a web of sullenness but surprisingly this expression of his brooding mentality occurs openly in a public place, which is contradictory to the purpose of a lugubrious state, grief is a way of expressing extreme sadness for someone and is intended to be done secretly or alone. When Romeo’s father sends Benvolio to console his younger cousin after his family discovers that he has been crestfallen for a while, it becomes apparent how contradictory Romeo sounds. Despite his extreme sadness he welcomes open conversation with his cousin Benvolio, which helps to expose Romeo’s facade to the cast as well to emphasise the asininity and childishness of his character.

Benvolio attempts to awake Romeo from his depression by telling him, ‘examine other beauties,’ but Romeo feels almost surprised by his cousins lack of credulous, as he detects his cousin not believing him he feels ...

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...mpulsively.

Another theme in Romeo and Juliet that tends to go un-noticed but is less significant than the sense of love is the sense of light and darkness, and hypothetically what they represent either hypothetically or through inference, darkness representing evil and a foreboding sense of destruction whereas light symbolising hope as well as destiny, purity and love. The title characters often refer to each other using celestial imagery as it is romantic but it also is a juxtaposition of the dark evil surrounding them in their lives, at times this is used to make humorous dramatic irony, Romeo and Juliet love stands out against their family feuds but the feuding and fighting tends to happen during the day and Romeo and Juliet’s actions are often at night in secret. This also creates a sense of inevitability that their love is destined to end obliquely in death.