Theme Of Love In Romeo And Juliet And Othello

Introduction

In Romeo and Juliet and Othello, love is portrayed as a complex and imperfect emotion,

which drives most of the plot forward. Shakespeare utilises many different types of love in

these poems: courtly love, between lovers of aristocratic classes; sexual love, between

bachelors of rich noble backgrounds; paternal love, between parents’ and their children;

and platonic love, between people in a non-sexual relationship. In most of the relationships

in the plays, the connections often become complicated by the deception and confusion by

negative influences in the plays, causing the relationships to break apart. In Shakespearean

comedies, such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Twelfth Night, the ending usually

consists

of a happy ending, such as a wedding, or the reuniting of long-lost friends.

However, in tragedies like Romeo and Juliet and Othello, they end with death time and

again, and these plays are of no exception.

Courtly Love

Courtly love was an old European tradition which was a set of rules about how lovers from

aristocratic classes should behave. Normally, falling in love was often accompanied by

“symptoms of love”, such as sighing, trembling and loss of sleep, as well as great emotional

disturbances. By Shakespeare’s time, the tradition of courtly love was ridiculed among the

higher classes, which Shakespeare took advantage of in some of his plays. In Othello, he

ridicules the love between Roderigo’s lusts for Desdemona, and in Romeo and Juliet he

ridicules Romeo’s fantasies for Rosaline.