Explore the various presentations of love in Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’, including a discussion of the different characters’ perspectives.
In the first two acts of Romeo and Juliet are filled with impulsive decisions and interpretations of love, mixed with other emotions.
Romeo, the principal male character is, at first unsure about his love for Rosaline. The audience comes to believe that it is lust, not love that drives him to thinking he feels strongly about her. He mentions that his love is unrequited, when he tells Benvolio that he is “out of her favour where I am in love,” indicating that he loves her and she does not return the passion and lust that he dreams of. Romeo at this point is not only portrayed as being disheartened, but extremely confused as well. He speaks with oxymoronic words such as “cold fire, bright smoke and sick health,” showing that he might not actually know what he wants. We get a different image of his perspective towards love in Act One Scene Five. Until this point Romeo has been depressed and sad because of Rosaline. Yet, when he first lays eyes upon Juliet, his attitude spontaneously changes. “Did my heart love till now? I ne’er saw beauty till this night.” This is an excellent quotation and it conveys a message of falseness; that Romeo has in fact never been in love with Rosaline. At the end of the act, when he kisses Juliet, he repeatedly asks to be given the sin again, referring to the kiss. After four lines since they met, they are already holding and touching each other. Yet he does not refer to it directly as being a good thing and he does not yet know that Juliet is a Capulet. Shakespeare possibly puts this phrase in to show that maybe subconsciously Romeo knows it is wrong. It also shows that maybe love is the only thing that makes him continue.
