“Out of her favour where I am in love”
Finding love a very confusing subject, Romeo uses oxymorons to represent his feelings about love,
“Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!”
Friar Lawrence, being a spiritual man recognises that Romeo’s feelings for Roseline are not love but are infantile feelings such as lust of infatuation.
Juliet’s dutiful love for her parents make her initially see it as an honour marry a man that her parents have asked her to.
“It is an honour that I dream not of”
However, as the play goes on and as Juliet meets Romeo her opinion of love changes and other types of love, such as romantic and spiritual love that she feels for Romeo, overtakes the importance of dutiful love for her parents.
As Romeo and Juliet meet their words instantly play off each other, intertwining to form a sonnet, the typical form of a love poem,
“Romeo – Have not Saint’s lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet - Ay, Pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer,”
The nurse is happy for Juliet and helps her in finding a way to marry Romeo. But being the pragmatic women she is, she lacks in the understanding that two people can care so much about each other. She lacks understanding of the spiritual part of a loving relationship, and being bawdy as ever, the nurse cracks a sexual joke.
“No less! Nay, bigger; women grow by men”
Mercutio’s attitude to romantic love is very similar in the way that he does not take love seriously. He makes jokes about romantic love and Roseline’s appearance in an attempt to trigger reactions from Romeo,
“By her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh
And the demesnes that there adjacent lie,”
Sampson and Gregory also joke about sex, and what they would do in contact with women from the Montague household,
“and thrust his maids to the wall”
This shows a lack of respect for women from the two men. They say they would kill Montague men and then rape the women. Although this does not show their attitude toward romantic love it does show the lack of respect.
The Capulet parents want Juliet to marry their daughter, Juliet, to Count Paris who Juliet has never met. Although it is not debatable that both parents love Juliet, their love may be more of a controlling love that you may have for a possession,
“An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend;”
When Juliet refuses to marry Paris her parents are upset and angry and show this by revealing how unimportant Juliet is to them. They argue that if she doesn’t do this then she does not deserve to live under their roof or at all.
“An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,”
Both the nurse and Friar Lawrence help Romeo and Juliet in their plans to marry. But in the end they both let down one or the other. The friar, lacking practical skills, fails the logistics of the plans to let Romeo and Juliet be together and so in many ways could be blamed for the deaths of Romeo and Juliet.
Throughout the majority of the play Juliet sees the nurse as someone she can confide in with her deepest secrets. However, the nurse lacks understanding of certain spiritual qualities of romantic love and advises Juliet to indeed marry Paris.
“I think it best you marry with the County”
This is the point where Juliet loses all respect and trust in the nurse and does not confide in her again and although Juliet is a wise young women her lack of someone to confide in leaves her alone to make many difficult decisions.
Shakespeare conveys many different types of love in his play “Romeo and Juliet”. Some he conveys as much more important types of love. The main theme of the play was the romantic love between Romeo and Juliet and the fact about fate bringing them together. He uses the sonnet as a way to show how they could be star crossed lovers because their lines cross to form the sonnet. But there are other types of love such as dutiful love that Juliet has for her parents which Juliet does not prioritise over the romantic love and spiritual connection that she obviously has with Romeo.
