However Capulet moves the wedding forward a day. Romeo does not receive the friar’s message, so he thinks Juliet is dead & rushes to her side. On arriving he takes his own life, by drinking a vile of poison. That is, after he has fought and killed Paris. Juliet then wakes up & seeing Romeo dead stabs herself, with his dagger. At the end the two families despair when they realise what has become of their arguments & end the feuding.
The theme of love runs strongly throughout the play. ‘Romeo & Juliet’ would, evidently, not be the same without it. I am now going to examine the different ways in which love can be portrayed & also the way in which different characters can value love.
Romeo & Juliet are so blindly in love that even life itself seems to bear no attraction without them being together. It is this passion that eventually kills the ‘star-crossed’ lovers.
Images of death recur throughout the play. This helps to link the theme of love with the extremes. The images of death portray the love and hate scenario which runs through the play. It is Romeo's love for Juliet that prevents him from rising to Tybalt’s challenge and the same love that the other characters in the scene interpret as cowardliness. This theme of love and hate helps to show that nothing is black and white, and that the love between Romeo and Juliet isn't as black and white as they both thought. "My only love sprung from my only hate!" The idea of black and white links in with the theme of light and darkness, which runs alongside with the theme of love. Images of darkness in the play stand for death, violence, sadness and secrecy. At the start of the play Romeo seeks out darkness because he is sad and depressed. Later on he and Juliet welcome the night because then they can be alone in secret. At the end of the play the darkness of the tomb and the dark night outside emphasise the sadness and tragedy of the lover's death. Images of light in the play stand for happiness, passion & love, but also sorrow. After the Capulet ball when Romeo sees a light in the window, he realises it’s Juliet & is overwhelmed by the passion & love he feels for her, even though they have only just met. Near the beginning of the play the nurse goes to meet Romeo & arranges the marriage for that day, light is linked with daytime & the two lovers are ‘happy’ at that point because they are to get married. After the lovers have consummated their marriage they feel sorrow when the light starts to come in through the window, as it means Romeo must leave. ‘Quickly, go; let light in & let life out’ You can see how Romeo & Juliet are mislead in thinking that their relationship is simply black & white, because Throughout the play a variety of different views on love are expressed through several different characters. One of them being Mercutio, who is a key character in the play. Who provides a humorous, but rough, attitude to love. His jokes are mostly crude and insulting, & throughout the scenes we see him in he makes jokes at the expense of Romeo, the nurse, and Tybalt. He sees love as an excuse to aggravate & insult people. In a few of his scenes he is shown insulting Romeo for his love of Rosaline, for example in Act 2 Scene 1. Mercutio is calling out to an imaginary Romeo, thinking Romeo had gone, using language that would infuriate him. He pretends to conjure up Romeo as if he were a spirit, by making a mockery of his feelings for Rosaline. "The ape is dead, and I must conjure him. I conjure thee by Rosaline’s bright eyes By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh, And the demesnes that there adjacent lie." Lady Capulet thinks of love as marriage - a social accessory. She therefore thinks Paris is an ideal match for her daughter as he is rich, popular and has a high place in society. Like the nurse, she thinks it is important that marriage improves social status and probably does not actually love her husband. She wants Juliet to be happy, but believes that having a wealthy husband is the only way to do this. She is quite shallow and does not see that a good social status is not everything & does not realise that love can make you happy. Choosing to believe that the image given to others is more important that truly loving someone. The Nurse also sees love as something which will defines Juliet’s future happiness and status in society, very much like Lady Capulet’s views of marriage. However Romeo & Juliet want to be with each other for the person inside them, & not because it will make them more socially secure or give them more money. This is what makes them different from the other characters. The clashing of views on the subject of love, you could argue, has a certain amount of bearing on the final outcome of the play.
The main focus of the play, or one of the main focuses, is the love shared by Romeo and Juliet. It is very different from the other attitudes to love shown in the play. As it is this pure love, which Romeo & Juliet have for each other, which is one of the factors which leads to the end tragedy.
From the word go Shakespeare is already telling us that there will be a theme of conflict running throughout the play. He does, firstly, by using a chorus. ‘Two households, both alike in dignity’ ’From ancient grudge to new mutiny,’ But he also does it by straight away, in Act 1 Scene 1, having the two feuding houses fighting in the streets.
Shakespeare expresses the theme of conflict using a variety of devices. The most obvious one is visual; this is the actual physical fighting on stage between some of the players and their deaths. This is shown especially in Act 3 scene I when the most dramatic of the fight scenes takes place resulting in two deaths, one of each family. Another visual device William Shakespeare uses is the positioning of good and bad scenes and good and bad characters next to each other. This emphasises the conflict between the different moods and personalities through the device of juxtaposition. For example in Act1 scene I Tybalt and Benvolio are presented together and this accentuates their conflicting personalities. Benvolio being a peace maker "I do but keep the peace" Which is directly followed by Tybalt who is of an aggressive nature saying "What, drawn and talk of peace. I hate the word". Also a love-based scene being Act 2 Scene VI which is the marriage is immediately followed by a scene of much hate being Act 3 scene I which is where two people end up dying. William Shakespeare also carries on this juxtaposition of opposites in his imagery "whiter than new snow upon a raven's back" he's saying that against the black raven the snow's whiteness is emphasised.
Throughout this play William Shakespeare uses many conflicting images, he does this to create a greater sense of opposites and to emphasise the conflict already present in the play. The main opposition in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is love and hate. During the play love & conflict are used, but you could not have one without the other. This is because each theme is used to push the other along for example in Act 3 Scene 1. Romeo & Juliet have just been married & Romeo arrives on the scene to see Tybalt provoking Mercutio, Tybalt then declares he wants to fight with Romeo. ‘Here comes my man ‘ Romeo says he will not fight, this is because he now regards Tybalt as family & his love for Juliet stops him from fighting, which leads to conflict when Mercutio steps in for Romeo. However, Tybalt kills Mercutio & Romeo then kills Tybalt in order to avenge the death of his friend. ‘Tybalt lies ‘ere slain, whom Romeo’s hand did slay‘.
The theme of conflict plays as big a part as that of love. Although it is love which first brings Romeo & Juliet together, it is the conflict between the two feuding families which pulls them apart & is the other factor which leads to the end tragedy.
This concludes my essay on the ‘themes of love & conflict’. These two themes are an important part of ‘Romeo & Juliet’. Many, if not all, of the events have either, or both, of the two themes to trigger it off. If one of these aspects of ‘Romeo & Juliet’ were missing the end result would definitely be different, & you should be able to see this by taking into account the examples which I have given throughout.
