Bearing in mind that ‘Romeo and Juliet´ is one of the most famous love stories ever written, examine Shakespeare´s presentation of ‘love´ referring closely to the language used by different characters.

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Bearing in mind that ‘Romeo and Juliet´ is one of the most famous love stories ever written, examine Shakespeare´s presentation of ‘love´ referring closely to the language used by different characters.

The play ‘Romeo and Juliet´ presents true love in the form of ‘star-crossed lovers´ and just as their love is depicted as eternal, the play itself has endured for years. There have been many adaptations of the play in the forms of books, films, ballets and plays. Several books have been loosely based on the story, involving young lovers of different religion or different race who are not permitted to be together. These are always very popular because people want to find true love. The words ‘Romeo and Juliet´ conjure up images associated with true love; but the play explores many views of ‘love´. Each character in the play has a different personality and view on life, therefore they perceive ‘love´ in their own distinct way, adding a clear contrast to Romeo and Juliet´s first love, which is true and pure.

        The play ‘Romeo and Juliet´ is the story of true love and devotion and it is therefore unexpected that the first reference to relationships in the play is all about sex. The first two characters that the audience is introduced to are Sampson and Gregory. They are vulgar and crude, making many sexual references and innuendoes. They do not see love as involving emotions or desires, but as a purely physical thing, sexual not emotional. Sampson refers to women as “weaker vessels” and tells of how he will rape the maids of the Montague household;
“Women being the weaker vessels are ever thrust to the wall”,
“I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the wall”.
Both Sampson and Gregory have petty and narrow perceptions of ‘love´. Neither of them appears to have ever experienced true love. They talk in a crude and coarse manner, brag about their own ‘attributes´ and see women as objects not people. They are typical of ‘yobs’ in society today, the type of people who fight because they think they should because society expects them to or because of feuding that spans generations.

Other contrasts to Romeo and Juliet in the play are the nurse and Mercutio. Mercutio is volatile and lively with an amazing imagination. He loves life and makes the most of each day. His love for words and puns is shown to its full in his speech about Queen Mab. The speech starts off being very idealistic and fantastical
“She gallops night by night
Through lovers´ brains, and then they dream of love,”
As it continues, the speech becomes vulgar and moves from the image of a beautiful fairy to ideas of war and suffering,
“Sometime she driveth o´er a soldiers neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats.”
        Mercutio is the kind of person who gets restless very easily. He thinks that Romeo is wasting his time with Rosaline, and mocks him. In general Mercutio has a clouded view of ‘love´. Like Sampson and Gregory he considers ‘love´ only in sexual terms rather than emotions, shown in his crude language,

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The nurse is similar to Mercutio in her use of vulgar language. The nurse is the equivalent of Juliet´s mother, she raised and looked after her and is very close to Juliet. Juliet is in fact a lot closer to the nurse than to her own mother. The one person that Juliet has always loved is the nurse. The nurse is the only character in the play that she tells about her love for Romeo. Juliet confides in the nurse, because she is like her mother. The nurse has a blunt attitude towards love and sex, but is an affectionate ...

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