At the time when Romeo is talking to Benvolio, Romeo discusses the point about his unpleasant life and how his love is affecting him. He uses oxymorons to show his position in life, to show that he is the negative to everything. He states, ’…O brawling love, O loving hate.’ He uses the opposite of love to show Benvolio and the audience how negative his love is by saying hate. He uses many oxymorons’ to show his emotions such as, ‘sick-health’ and ‘steep-still walking. These highlight to the audience how depressing his life is. Romeo is hasty to fall in and out of love. He does not think about what can go wrong. Romeo and Juliet did not take the time to get to know each other and form a deep intimate relationship. They had rushed into it as if it was a game. They are also very young to be experiencing love. Even people much older them in the Elizabethan times did not know what love meant. It may have really been true love that was mutually felt by both of them.
Romeo had very vague definitions of love at the time when he wanted a passionate relationship with Rosaline. He defines, ‘…love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.’ This conveys the idea that love is like a big black cloud, which is difficult to escape from. Likewise when there’s a fire, which is convoluted to escape from. Shakespeare stresses that the love Romeos tangled in is very difficult to get out off. Therefore, Romeo is finding it extremely troublesome to forget Rosaline.
On the same day, Romeo gatecrashes the Capulet’s fancy dress party with a few friends. That night he senses love at first sight. He falls deeply in love with Juliet because of her appearance. In the same way, Juliet gradually falls in love with Romeo’s appearance. Romeo alleges, ‘…For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.’ This illustrates that Romeo has never distinguished true beauty before this night. It also emphasises that Rosaline was not defined to him as true beauty. Therefore there was something different Romeo saw in Rosaline; maybe it was her characteristics or status, but as it has not been mentioned in Act 1 we do not actually know the reason for his love for her, but for certain we know that Romeo fell in love with Juliet’s beauty. In all probabilities, Romeo and Juliet were not really in love. They were infatuated with each other. They were in love with the idea that they were in love. They could not have fallen so deeply in love with only one conversation.
Meanwhile, on the meeting of Romeo and Juliet, he describes Juliet as a ‘holy shrine’, this implies that there is nothing purer than a holy shrine, representing that Juliet’s beauty is totally pure. Hence, Romeo uses romantic, ornate and flowery language. Likewise, he uses the term ‘pilgrims’, which is associated with ‘holy shrine’. It can be concluded that Shakespeare wanted the audience to conclude in their minds that Juliet is the holy shrine and Romeo is the pilgrim and a pilgrim would do anything to get to the holy shrine, but in this case the pilgrim wanted to kiss the holy shrine.
From the first Act, it can also be concluded that Romeo’s love for Juliet is balanced. They love each other as much as one loved the other. Shakespeare uses rhyming couplets and sonnets to highlight this point. The rhyming couplets he uses are, ‘hand-stand’, ‘much-touch’, ‘this-kiss’, prayer-despair’, etc. Shakespeare only uses these sonnets when Romeo and Juliet are in love.
Surely, Rosaline and Romeo had an invisible relationship, whereas Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was more perceptible. Both relationships affected Romeo’s actions in someway or another. Rosaline had made Romeo’s life exceedingly negative as she did not return the love, which Romeo had; she had made ‘love’ a negative statement for him, whereas Juliet had brightened his day and added the essence of love at first sight (not knowing who she was or what she was) we can also see that Juliet had turned Romeos ‘negative love’ into ‘positive love.’
After concluding all the points, Personally, I think that Romeos love for Juliet is less sincere then his love for Rosaline. This is because when Romeo falls in love with Juliet, it is love at first sight and Romeo only falls in love with Juliet’s figure and not the inner soul. But when Romeo was in love with Rosaline, he did not fall in love with her beauty, as he had not seen true beauty until the night of the Capulets party. So it has been assumed that he fell in love with Rosaline for whom she was. At the time when he was in love with Rosaline, and was not returned the love, Romeo was affected by it in life, as time was not passing by as ‘…sad hours seemed long...’ This is because it was true love; whereas when Romeo fell in love with Juliet it was love at first sight therefore he loves her beauty and not her so it is not true love for the reason that it’s just falling in love with her appearance. So, as I have said I think that Romeo’s love for Juliet is less sincere then his love for Rosaline. Whereas, Shakespeare suggests that Romeo’s love for Juliet is more sincere then his love for Rosaline for the reason that when Romeo is in love with Juliet, he is very honest and shows his romantic emotions which also makes Juliet feel the same way about him. This is highlighted when Romeo states, ‘…If I profane with my unworthiest hands this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this…’ it also shows that if Romeo touches the holy shrine (Juliet) with his unpleasant hands there will be a tender sin left upon the holy shrine.
Furthermore, Romeo is free from pretence, but when he was in love with Rosaline he did act out his emotions to show how he felt, excluding the reasons. Therefore he was living in a world of depression but did not show why. Therefore you can see why I think Romeo’s love for Juliet is less sincere then his love for Rosaline.
Evidently, Shakespeare wanted the audience to think that Romeo’s love for Juliet is more sincere then his love for Rosaline.
