comparison of love and hate in romeo and juliet

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“Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.” Compare the presentation of love and hate in Romeo and Juliet with specific reference to act one scene one and act two scene two. Is the play more about love or hate?

        William Shakespeare was an actor/poet/playwright. A few years after being recognised as this he joined up with one of the most successful acting troupes in London. In 1599 they lost the theatre where they worked but were now wealthy enough to build their own theatre that they named ‘The Globe’. It was however in 1595/96 that Romeo and Juliet was believed to have been written.

        Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. Set in Verona, it is about two feuding families, to which no amount of fighting or talking ever helps stop the feud. However two teenagers from opposite families fall in love. In Romeo and Juliet we are introduced to that love and guided through it. Then we see it end in violence because they couldn’t be together and finally we see that their death was the only thing that could ever stop the on going hatred, these are the two main themes. Love and hate. They do however cause a lot of other ongoing themes such as pride, loyalty and family. They also extend into different types of love and hatred. We see the love grow from something sexual into something physical and as it does we also see the hatred grow from something petty and violent into a deep set full on loathing. All very powerful and dangerous emotions as we see in the play. The prologue was written in sonnet form, which was very popular in 1595. Sonnets are a type of poem with 14 lines which at the time were mainly associated with love so it worked well in this instance.

        In this essay I will address the ongoing themes of love and hate and try to find out whether the play was more about love or hate. I will do this by looking at structure, sound and language, imagery and themes within Romeo and Juliet.

        

        The two scenes I am looking at are act one scene one and act two scene two.  The reason I’m looking at these is because they are very important scenes in the play. Act one scene one is important because it’s when we first see the hatred between the two families, ‘Gregory: a dog of the house of Montague moves me’

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Also we begin to understand what the young males think of love at first because they do not fully understand truly passionate emotional love and talk a lot about sexual love ‘well in that hit you’ll miss: she’ll not be hit. With cupid’s arrow: she hath Dian’s wit.’ Here Romeo is saying how he is heartbroken because the woman he loves wont have sex with him. He comes in and we know he isn’t happy because the other males have been talking about it previously. He talks about how upset he is that his current girlfriend isn’t having sex with ...

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