Discuss the different attitudes to love revealed in Romeo and Juliet - Examine the language used by the characters to discuss love - Are there any messages about love revealed in the play? Why does Shakespeare portray different types/aspects of love?

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  Sophia Moatti

  3 GCSE1

                                English coursework

                Romeo and Juliet

With close reference to the text, discuss the different attitudes to love revealed in Romeo and Juliet. Examine the language used by the characters to discuss love. Are there any messages about love revealed in the play? Why does Shakespeare portray different types/aspects of love?

The words “ Romeo and Juliet” conjure up images associated with true love; but the play explores many different 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 first reference to an aspect of love is after the prologue and it refers to rape and therefore lust not love. The first two characters that the audience is introduced to are Sampson and Gregory. They are vulgar and crude making sexual references and innuendos. 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 trust to the wall, I will push Montague’s men from the wall, and Thrust his maid 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.

Like Sampson and Gregory, Mercutio considers love only in sexual terms rather than emotions. Mercutio is volatile and lively with an amazing imagination. He loves life and this is shown in his love for words and puns in his speech about Queen Mab. The speech starts by Mercutio portraying love as a very idealistic and dreamy thing:

“ She gallops night by night

Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love”

However as the speech continues he talks about the torment, violence and suffering inflicted on men by queen Mab and her love dreams as they sleep.

“ Sometime she driveth o’ er a soldiers neck

And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats”

Mercutio believes that Romeo is wasting his time with Rosaline, and mocks him. In general Mercutio has a very clouded vision of love, and believes like the other young men of the time, that love is all about sex. When he teases Romeo he seizes every opportunity to make sexual puns: “ O Romeo, that she were, O that she were

        An open-arse, thou a pop’rin pear!”

In addition to the sexual love that characterises Mercutio, the great friendship he has with Romeo is pure love. Mercutio risks his life for the true sake and love of his friend Romeo and not like the others, for an foolish ongoing feud. Mercutio not only helps Romeo fight Tybalt, but he gives him advice and cheered him up when he was down about his love for Rosaline. Romeo wants to honour Mercutio’s life, and so he slays Tybalt to achieve revenge for Mercutio’s death. Romeo and Mercutio are like brothers they look out for each other and there friendship is solid.

The Nurse is similar to Mercutio in her use of vulgar language when it comes to love. 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 her own mother. The Nurse is the only character in

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the play that Juliet tells about her love for Romeo and she does aid Juliet’s love to Romeo,

but, in the end she tries to persuade Juliet to marry Paris. He Nurse has a blunt attitude towards

love and sex, but is an affectionate and loving woman who wants Juliet to be happy. She

tells a story about Juliet falling on her face, the story is vulgar and she repeats it several times,

finding it very funny. She often refers to sex and love as jokes, and she has a very bawdy sense of

humour. ...

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