Romeo And Juliet Quotes Analysis

Was The Play Romeo and Juliet Actually a Warning?
Love; an intense feeling of deep affection. In the play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare emphasized love and made it a driving factor in the play. Love is what drove Romeo and Juliet to get married, love is what made Lord Capulet try to force Juliet to marry Paris, and love is the reason Romeo and Juliet die at the end of the play. In the play Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare tries to teach the audience about the dangers of love.
To begin, Shakespeare uses characterization to teach the audience about the dangers of love. In act two scene six of the play, the Friar is made out to be a wise mentor. Right after Romeo came to the Friar to ask him to marry him and Juliet, the Friar talks about love and he says, “These violent

delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder… Therefore love moderately. Long love doth so. Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.” This quote shows characterization of the Friar by what he says, he is saying to love moderately and to take it slow. This is important because the Friar is made out to be a wise and knowledgeable person throughout the play, and people often go to him for advice. So even the Friar who is one of the smartest people in the play says to take love slow, this shows that he and by extension Shakespeare thinks that love can be dangerous. At the beginning of the play Romeo walks in with his heart broken and starts talking and he says, “O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen Chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep that is not what it is!” This quote shows characterization of Romeo, he is literally sayinging the love is everything but love. This is important because it shows what Shakespeare thinks about love, that it isn’t actually what it seems. Both of these quotes connect to the topic sentence because they both show a character in the play saying that love should be taken slowly and that love isn’t actually what it seems.
Secondly, Shakespeare uses imagery to teach the audience about the dangers of love.

In one of Romeo's last lines he talks about death and he says, “Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide! Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark! Here's to my love!” This quote shows imagery by describing a piece of bark smashing against rocks. This is important because in this quote Romeo is the piece of bark, the rocks are death, and the sea is love. This quote shows that love is what drove romeo to death. This is Shakespeare’s way of subtly showing that love can be, and is dangerous. Near the end of the play, after Romeo's death, Juliet wakes up and sees his body and says, “O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.” This quote shows imagery by describing how Juliet killed herself. This is important because just like Romeo, Juliet killed herself for love. This is Shakespeare's way of doubling down on the idea that love leads to death which is one of the reasons love is dangerous. Both of these quotes connect to the topic sentence because they both show how love caused a character to kill his or herself, and they both emphasize that love is

dangerous.
In conclusion, Shakespeare teaches the audience that love is dangerous using characterization by having a wise character talk about how love should be taken slowly, and having one of the main characters say that love isn’t what it seems. Shakespeare also uses imagery to teach the audience that love can be dangerous by describing scenes where love causes death. So as shown in this essay Shakespeare was trying to warn the audience about the dangers of love through characterization and imagery, and he did it beautifully.