The first type of love is the exchangeable love of Benvolio. According to Benvolio, a man should love a woman for only the duration of their relationship and if their relationship should end, the man should feel no grief. Before Romeo met Juliet his definition of love is pain, an opinion derived from his relationship with Rosaline. I believe Romeo is both right and wrong: not returned love is pain, but Romeo does not truly love and it could be said that he only loves with his eyes. Friar Lawrence criticises this form of love and his relationship with Rosaline saying:
“Young men’s love then lies not truly in hearts but in their eyes.”
Romeo however dismisses this assumption saying in return:
“Thou chidest me oft for loving Rosaline.”
Juliet appears not to know what love is, and, for that matter, does not seem to care. She remains ignorant to the matter until she meets Romeo. When Romeo first sets his eyes upon Juliet he immediately associates her with light. “She doth teach the torches to burn bright.” He then describes her as a brilliant jewel shining against a dark stunned background, like a star on a dark night. In its own turn, light suggests the illumination and brightness of love. The star image, a constant motif throughout the play and which refers as much to destiny as to love, universalises love by placing it in the context of the holiness and vastness of the heavens. Clearly bewitched by what he has seen Romeo refers to her beauty as, “too rich for use, for earth to dear.” In other words, her beauty and by implication his love is too refined for this earth and will not be long upon it which of course proves to be true too quickly. Also it could be said that Romeo is happier talking about love, he is very much for words as we see in act II.6 line 24:
Ah Juliet, if the measure of thy joy
Be heaped like mine, and that they skill be more
To blazon it, then sweeten with thy breath
This neighbour air, and let rich music’s tongue
Unfold the imagined happiness that both
Receive in either by this dear encounter.
Romeo expresses his love conventionally either in cliché or with typical classical references:
“Well, in that hit you miss. She’ll not be hit
With cupids arrow. She hath Dian’s wit,
And, in strong proof of chastity well armed”
“He that is strucken blind cannot forget
The precious treasure of his eyesight lost.”
The clichéd and conventional quality of Romeo’s speeches about Rosaline along with his early speeches about Juliet show to a certain extent an immaturity underlined by friar Lawrence’s comments. However Romeo’s language matures with the intensity of his new experience and of course the pressure of events.
The holiness of love, which I mentioned, is shown in the scene in which Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. Romeo says that he is a pilgrim and Juliet is a shrine. Juliet and Romeo then join their hands as if in prayer, “And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss” This highly orchestrated duet is quietly intense and the imagery refers us to the reference and holiness associated with their love.
In the balcony scene Juliet is described as a source of light; firstly the sun that is a source of light itself. “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet id the sun.” At line 15 of act II scene 2 Romeo develops a longer image of Juliet among the stars which develops the theme already begun and to which Juliet will return as she waits longingly and impatiently for her husband at the beginning of act III scene 2:
“And when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night.”
Ironically, their love will end in “violence”, they will be consumed by a kiss and their love will be confounded-by death. But this warning is at the heart of the play and gives us a guide to the true qualities of their love. It is above all, swift and spontaneous: Juliet accepts the pilgrims kiss instantly; by the end of the scene (1.5) she states, “if he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed,” followed immediately by,” My only love sprung from my only hate” And this from a girl who had just said before the dance that marriage was “an honour that I think not of.”
Throughout the duration of Romeo and Juliet numerous types of love
Are shown none of them are wrong, as the word love can be interpreted in
Many different ways however it is obvious that Shakespeare did not have this
In mind when he wrote the play. Shakespeare intention when writing this play
Was to shows us that the only type of love worth having is true love and that
the only true love exists between Romeo and Juliet.
