In contrast, the relationships between Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio are examples of contemporary notions of neoplatonic love. Romeo kills Tybalt, seething that he remains “Alive in triumph, and Mercutio slain! Away to heaven, respective lenity.” The punctuation and fragmented syntax connotes the rage and injustice that Romeo feels causing him to forget the very reason that he refused to fight: his love for Juliet. Tybalt is presented as embracing rage and anger: thus is in direct opposition to Romeo at this moment in the play. The plosive alliteration in his speech “Draw, and talk of peace?” captures this aggression and the contempt he has for unity. Shakespeare employs him as a constant warning that threatens the love within the play. He is associated with words such as “heartless”, “hate” and “death” and therefore his darkness is another way of undermining the bright love of Romeo and Juliet. This is evident in the light and dark imagery that runs throughout the play. Tybalt is also the cause of Mercutio’s death: what was initially a light-hearted and charming friendship suddenly becomes vexatious from this point. Mercutio’s curse “A plague o’ both the houses” is a haunting and poignant repetition which foreshadows the ending of the play. However, he also provides relief and comedy. Their friendship can be recognised through their sparring, when Mercutio ridicules Romeo’s infatuation with Rosaline, declaring “O Romeo, that she were – O that she were an open – etcetera; thou a poperin-pear!” Although his teasing is good-natured, the repetition of the cry “O” overtly mimics the cry of a pining courtly lover, and the use of the word “etcetera” suggests the concept of love is nonsense. Moreover, his crude metaphor, “poperin-pear” suggests that he thinks his friend’s love is nothing more than lust and the plosive sounds are emphatic in their derision.
An equally dismissive attitude to love is ostensibly depicted in Sonnet 130. Shakespeare uses frank and grotesque language to paradoxically describe how his “mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” The emphatic nature of the word “nothing” encapsulates his defiance and he ironically takes similes such as ‘sun’ and ‘roses’ and undercuts them by asserting that his mistress is their antithesis. This creates a parody of the popular Petrarchan sonnets, as instead of the flowery, pretentious language, Shakespeare employs a coarse honesty. He uses ‘Reeks’ to describe his mistress’s breath, suggesting a pungent and unpleasant smell. However, the purity of his love becomes evident in the final rhyming couplet, when he encapsulates the argument: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare/ As any she belied with false compare.” The absolute sincerity is clear: despite her lack of adornment, his love is based on more than just a biological prerogative, and the couplet makes his previous criticism flattering. The preceding imagery has been deliberately grotesque and self-consciously mocking that this resonates with a powerful truthful love. The comparison with a goddess initially appears to be a comment upon her lack of elegance. However, the idea asserted is that he has no need to see a “goddess go: [his] mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground”: she is human and he loves her for it, rendering the divine a false one. The alliteration provides a flow which symbolises the graceful walk of a goddess, but this is stilted by the semicolon as he goes on to talk about his mistress, implying their relationship to be honest and comfortable. The couple seem to have an understanding of what their love is; something that the sonnets to the Fair Lord lack.
Similarly, sincerity is evident in the language between Romeo and Juliet when they first meet in Act 1 Scene 5. Shakespeare uses religious imagery to capture this moment, as opposed to the brutal honesty in sonnet 130. Romeo compares Juliet to a “holy shrine” and Shakespeare extends this metaphor with the phrasing “dear saint”, which not only portrays his love for her as spiritual and untainted, but also petrarchianises his words, as comparing her to a saint elevates her to a goddess. To a modern audience, this would seem a customary comparison, but to an Elizabethan one, it would have been shocking: comparing a lover to a saint was deemed sacrilegious and disrespectful to the Gods. Thus, even religion and the Gods are against Romeo and Juliet’s love. The stagecraft of their first interaction is in the form of a typical Shakespearean sonnet: 14 lines of iambic pentameter concluding with a rhyming couplet. The meter resembles a heartbeat and one could argue that the intensity of their love is heightened for the audience as a result of this. The words of the lovers fit perfectly into this structure, just as the image of the lovers touching one another, “palm to palm” coincides eloquently with their first kiss. The entire sonnet hints at the perfection of their love, but the dramatic irony is profound: we know its end is death, creating empathy for them. Nonetheless we simultaneously acknowledge the importance of the dramatisation, through Romeo’s passionate language.
This is an absolute juxtaposition with his language at the beginning of the play when he talks of Rosaline, declaring, “She’s fair I love.” The monosyllabic words provide heaviness to his tone that does not connote romance. His love is superficial, since the first thought that comes to his mind is her body and its beauty, as he speaks with the linguistic conventions of a courtly lover, asserting that "The all-seeing sun / ne'er saw her match since first the world begun." The sibilance is soft and gentle, providing the awed and hushed tones of a lover and yet feels contrived. He indulges in light and dark imagery but it is soulless compared to his description of Juliet: “It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” This image elevates their love whereas the parallel suggests that Romeo finds the idea of a courtly lover more appealing than Rosaline herself. Romeo continues with exclamations: “O she is rich in beauty; only poor than, when she dies, with beauty dies her store.” He presents Rosaline as a conquest to be won, rather than a woman to be loved, portraying him as extremely misogynistic and self-involved. Romeo does not reference Rosaline by name until much later, further connoting objectification. However, in Elizabethan England, women were equated with their monetary value. He wants the unattainable which makes him seem more like a child than a lover.
Similarly, Sonnet 129 also explores the theme of lust, but with startling extremity. Shakespeare rejects the ambiguous pretentious language of the era and his words become much more explicit. He uses negative language to describe lust as “perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude cruel, not to trust…” The relentless listing gives a sense of urgency and overwhelms the reader, suggesting that the sonnet itself is the uncontrollable expressions of frustration. It is not addressed to one person, making it seem an honest and raw expression of personal feelings. Shakespeare displays no reservations as he pageants pure emotions at their crudest; something which he perhaps could not do with his sonnets to the fair lord, due to the homophobic attitudes in Elizabethan England. He oscillates between tenses and time, exploring the problems with intimacy, whether that be in having “Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme”, which suggests these are the speaker’s chaotic thoughts and lust is instinctual and carnal. There is a tension between the blissful anticipation of lust and the shame that comes after the act, which is seen in the contrasting imagery of “bliss” and “woe”, “before and behind”, “pursuit” and “possession”. They highlight the turmoil that he is left in. However, the speaker regains his composure in the concluding couplet: “All this the world well knows; yet none knows well to shun the heaven that leads men to this hell” and the images of paradise versus eternal damnation add to the chaos and aggression. The words are ironic and he comes to accept the paradox of human nature: knowing a sensation will lead to shame, yet seeking it anyway. The sonnet is interesting as it has no specific subject, personal pronouns or possessiveness in the words. In fact it has quite an impersonal tone, suggesting lust to be instinctual and raw. Although, Romeo and Juliet do indulge in one another and make love relatively early in their relationship, they wait until after marriage to consummate, asserting the need for morality. Indeed their love, something that should be beautiful and pure, is gnarled and corrupted by their parents’ feud, who demand Juliet marry Paris.
This demand is made in Act 1 Scene 3, by Lady Capulet, highlighting the strained relationship that Juliet has with her mother: their bond never seems to come close to that of Juliet and her Nurse. Indeed it is the Nurse that Juliet turns to, despairingly questioning, “O Nurse, how shall this be prevented?” The emotion is evident in her use of “O”: she is pouring her heart out to the only loving and maternal figure that she knows. However, even this relationship becomes distorted. When the Nurse suggests Paris, Juliet turns against her, declaring, “Ancient damnation! O most wicked fiend!” The fact that she turns against all those who love her connotes Juliet’s isolation that comes with her love of Romeo. Whilst the Nurse and Friar Lawrence act out of love if they had not meddled, the lovers could have been saved, but the parental substitutes were just trying to help. In juxtaposition, Capulet’s relentless exclamations of “hang thee, young baggage disobedient wretch!” portrays his aggressive and visceral response towards his daughter. He expects her to thank him, not defy him, but Shakespeare’s contemporaries would expect this from the Elizabethan family, as this was the norm in their patriarchal world. Many of the parents’ actions come across as unacceptable to a contemporary audience, yet an Elizabethan one will have understood that they are victims of society. In this sense, the ‘villains’ of this play, i.e. the parents and even Paris, do have genuine love for the children. In fact, although the audience is biased and cannot support Paris, we sympathise with him since he dies for Juliet. His love cannot compare to that of Romeo’s, but it is still a form of love.
In conclusion, Shakespeare presents the concept of love, in both the play and the sonnets with a myriad of faces: it is all at once beautiful, hopeful, angry, lustful and illicit. Nonetheless, none of the texts despair of it: it remains a preoccupation, “an ever fixed mark”, within Shakespeare’s body of work, and humanity itself, which is why the texts resonate within a contemporary audience. Interestingly, Shakespeare also allows potent hatred to permeate throughout the play and sonnets, which ostensibly serve to undermine the concept of love, but in truth, heightens it. The struggle to find and maintain love is realistically associated with all types of love, yet in the body of his work that has been examined here, it has been achieved. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ remains to this day, the most renowned and beautiful tragedy of all time. Shakespeare uses the lovers to end the feud between their parents and the sonnets to express his attitudes towards love as eternal and never ending, thus exploring the idea that as difficult and confusing as love can be ultimately one should never give up on it.
