"Go ask his name: if he be married my grave is like to be my wedding bed"(Act 1 Scene 5)
She is devastated when she realises he is a Montague, from the family her family hates. So love is immediately contrasted with hate.
The love between Romeo & Juliet is today a symbol of great romantic love between a man and a woman. A great lover is called a "Romeo".
"There are so many examples of the great love between Romeo & Juliet but my favourite speech in the play ( & which shows Juliet's great love for Romeo in the clearest light) is in Act 3 Scene 2:
“....and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no attention to the Garish sun”
Romeo & Juliet show romantic love but Shakespeare also contrasts different types of love as well. Romantic love is contrasted with unromantic love where people marry not for love but for financial reasons or to advance their social status. There is the contrast between spiritual love and sexual love. Between passionate love and love "in moderation". However the main contrast is still between love itself and the fighting and hate between the Montagues and the Capulets."
"Perhaps the next great contrast in the play is between Light and Dark. To Romeo, Juliet is the "shining light"-a light that shines in the darkness. Everything bad is black, but everything to do with Juliet is "white and bright"
This contrast is clearly shown in Act 2 Scene 2 when, to Romeo, Juliet is the source of all light:
"..But soft what light through yonder window breaks, It is the east and Juliet is the sun, Arise fair sun and kill the envious moon"
Already in Act 1 Scene 2 the elegant white (light) swan has been contrasted with the black (dark) crow (Benvolio to Romeo-line 85)
I also think this contrast is very well shown throughout Act 3 Scene 5 and Act 4 Scene 5
“ Do lace the serving clouds in yonder east: Nights candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tiptoe on misty mountain tops. I must be gone and live, or stay and die ”
The contrast between young and old is also very important in the play.
The scene with the Nurse and Lady Capulet (act 1, Scene 3), deals with the age of Juliet, who we discover is not even 14 years old. And then, she, Juliet, says that lots of old people are very slow, so slow that they appear to be dead. This occurs in act 2, Scene 5.
“ But old folks many feign as they were dead .”
There is therefore a contrast between the youth of Romeo and Juliet and the inability of the older generation (for example the parents ) to understand Romeo and Juliet’s feelings ( Act 3 Scene 3). Romeos Speech to the friar
“ Thou canst not speak of that thou dost not feel ”
"The other examples of in R&J are perhaps not quite so obvious, but,I think, they are still important to the play.
There is, as I mentioned at the beginning of this essay,the contrast between what happens in the "Real World" and what happens in the "Unreal World". In the "real world" the characters joke and make rude comments about, for example, sex and use bad, bawdy and crude language. For example: IN ACT 1 Scene 3.
"yea , quoth he, dost thou fall upon thy face ? Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit, “Wilt thou, Jule ? and by my holidam, the pretty wretch left crying, and said “Ay”. To see how a jest shall come about!
They complain about things like their health and they get involved in very physical activities such as fighting. Mercutio and the Nurse can be said to live in the real world, and so can Tybalt, who is quite a violent person really. As a contrast to this Romeo &Juliet live a lot of the time in an unreal world. That is to say they take a very romantic, poetic, dreamy attitude to the world.
"Romeo particularly lives most of the time in this unrealworld, and Juliet seems quite happy to do the same when they are together. Juliet however is more aware of the real world and warns Romeo of physical dangers, such as being caught in the Capulet garden.
ACT 2 SCENE 2 "...the place death,considering who thy art. If any of my kinsmen find thee here"
There are other occasions in the play where information read & obtained from books is contrasted with knowledge & experience gained from real life.
"Another interesting contrast in Romeo &Juliet is that while obviously a Romantic Tragedy, ending in the death of both Romeo & Juliet, there is also a great deal of comedy in the play. I particularly like the humorous character of the Nurse. In Act 1 Scene 3 the Nurse goes on and on, when all she is asked is the simple question as to whether she knows how old J is. Lady Capulet finds it very difficult to get her to stop talking. ("Enough of this. I pray thee hold thy peace")
Mercutio can also be humourous and when he and the Nurse are together(Act 2 Scene 4) there is a great deal of bawdy humour. The humour in the play really ends when Mercutio is killed and the playbecomes pure tragedy after that.
"Finally there is the contrast between Life and Death throughout the Play. This is connected to the contrast between Light and Dark which I have already mentioned. Light represents Life and Dark represents Death. The Prologue tells us that Romeo &Juliet are going to die and so right from the very beginning there is a form of sadness whenever we see Romeo & Juliet happy because we know the sad outcome of their eventual deaths.
“A pair of star crossed lovers, take their life” Chorus/Prologue
A good example of the contrast between life and death can be seen in Act 2 Scene 3 when the Friar is gathering herbs and plants. He talks about plants that can kill if eaten but that are good for you if smelled.
"Virtue itself turns vice being misapplied and vice plant Sometimes by action dignified .....Canker eats up that”
You can see from all I have written Romeo & Juliet is a play in which Shakespeare makes great use of contrast. He does this through the characters themselves, the plot itself and the various themes of the play.
Romeo &Juliet is a marvellous and effective play made, in my opinion, all the better by these themes of contrast running through it. As someone who is roughly the same age as Juliet I find it as good as anything I have read recently, even though it was written nearly 400 years ago"
