Various Types of Love in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

What is love? Love means a worm liking or affection toward another person. Through out the play Romeo and Juliet various types of love are displayed by several characters. Benvolio believes that women are interchangeable and at the beginning of the play Romeo believes love is a pain. While Juliet does not even have a have a definition of love, Paris and Lady Capulet defines it by appearance. Mercutio is unable to understand love and the nurse believes that marring some one is better than no one, even though you despise that person.

Even though Paris’s’ love for Juliet was seen as a mere affection for her beauty and Paris had planed to marry Juliet through an arranged marriage, but as the play gets to and end it is show that Paris truly did love Juliet. Paris is a noble and a friend of lord Capulet. He asks for Juliet’s hand in marriage earlier in the play, “Younger than her happy mother made,” where he is not given an exact answer. His love for Juliet is an infatuation, but one can argue, that it was true love because he had promised to visit Juliet’s grave with a rose, every day until his death. “Sweet flower with flowers thy bridal bed I stew,” This enforces the fact that he could have truly loves Juliet. Paris had arrives at the house of Capulet extra early on the day his wedding, “Make Haste, The bridegroom he is come already.” Again it can be reason that his love for Juliet was real but he also talks of Juliet as a procession or a conquest. It is uncertain that Paris’s love for Juliet is genuine but one thing is for certain, Juliet despised Paris.

Mercutio’s perception of love is crude, obscene and sexual, similar to of the Nurse. It is certain that he does not understand true love and does not believe in it. “By her high forehead and her scarlet looks and by her fine foot straight leg,” Mercutio explains his view of Romeo’s affection toward Rosaline and it is unquestionably sexual. Many of Mercutio’s speeches consist of nonsense but they happen to be long and contain obscene concepts to them such as the infamous “Queen mab” speech in Act 1. “Prick love for Pricking, and you beat love down,” as Benvolio, Mercutio believes that females are interchangeable. Mercutio always manages to turn a simple discussion into a coarse and obscene conversation such as, “She had a better love to berhyme her.