For my essay I will concentrate on act 1, scene 5 and act 2, scene 2 - it is in these scenes that Romeo and Juliet first meet and declare their love for each other. I will show how Shakespeare conveys the theme of love and how he captivates his audience by portraying the passion through clever use of language.
In the scenes Act 1 scene 5 and act 2 scene 2, Shakespeare introduces the theme of love and how this theme is going to play an important role in sealing the fate of all the characters through the actions of Romeo and Juliet. As mentioned earlier, fate plays an important role in this play. Shakespeare continually reminds the audience through foreshadowing events, introducing or reusing imagery that is prevalent throughout the play to seal the fate of all characters. No one escapes the tragedy that stems from the love of Romeo and Juliet. These two scenes are crucial to the plot of the whole play as they not only relate to the first two most important meetings between Romeo and Juliet but also set the wheels of fate in motion. Tybalt's, Mercutio's and ultimately that of Romeo of Juliet's are sealed. When the first exchange between Romeo and Juliet takes place, Shakespeare deliberately employs the sonnet as it serves a dual purpose. Firstly in reminding the audience of the prologue, this was also in the form of a sonnet, noted by the rhyming couplet at the end. "...through grant prayers serve for prayers sake...while my prayer’s effect I take”, these lines foreshadow the death of the Romeo and Juliet the “star crossed lovers”. The second purpose of the sonnet is to portray a romantic scene. The Sonnets were a medium for love poetry (a rhyming fourteen line poem) - which many in the 16th Century audience would notice, as they would be familiar with the pattern of rhymes.
Love is a major theme in the play and Shakespeare shows it in many forms. Throughout the play different love is viewed in various ways. At the start the servants Sampson and Gregory see love as brutish, crude and bestial. Mercutio and the nurse talk about love from a purely physical, bawdy, lustful point of view. Tybalt has a love for his family honour and he is angered when Romeo attends the masked ball uninvited. The love the friar gives to Romeo and the nurse to Juliet is parental love, they care for the children as if there were their own. Lord Capulet and wife see love merely as a financial transaction to secure and retain wealth (they arrange a marriage for Juliet with the sole intention to enable them to retain and elevate their status in society). Whereas Romeo's love for Rosaline is one sided, it is an unrequited love. Therefore when Shakespeare represents the purest and truest love he goes to great pains to ensure that the audience are left in no doubt that true love is the ultimate love of all, and that it is between Romeo and Juliet.
In act 1 scene 5, Shakespeare displays love from the very start of the play through the character Romeo and his courtly love for Rosaline. This is a style of love that is little known nowadays but is evident from the play that was a common idea in the days of Shakespeare. It is basically love from a distance.
Romeo attends without invitation the Capulet party in the hope he will see Rosaline, the girl he is infatuated with. His love for Rosaline is unrequited (she does not love him in return) and has left him in a great sorrow. Romeo states that he is love sick and describes his sad feelings by saying, “Why, such is love’s transgressions. Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast, which thou wilt propagate, to have it prest with more of thine. This love that thou hast shown doth add more grief to too much of mine own.” This is an example of the immature and superficial love Romeo has for Rosaline and how he is grieving.
Romeo is presented as a typical Petrarchan lover, rejected by Rosaline, the lady he admires. Romeo uses artificial sounding language to describe his emotions,"Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs." Shakespeare continues to use the Petrarchan model when Romeo and Juliet fall in love at first sight in this scene. In this instance, Romeo realizes that his love for Rosaline was blind, “Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight. For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.” With these words he renounces all previous love for Rosaline thus making what he felt for Rosaline meaningless. The two characters do not know who each other are, however the audience immediately know who they are (because of the prologue), and this creates dramatic irony as the audience are aware of what the characters are oblivious to. The audience know that the characters are from two feuding families; therefore they know their love cannot happen and an invisible barrier between the two lovers is created. A good example is in the Baz Luhrmann film interpretation. Here when the two characters first meet, they are separated by a large fish tank which is transparent (like an invisible barrier), they can see each other through the glass, but cannot reach each other.
Capulet wants to arrange a marriage between his daughter and Paris. A modern audience would sympathise with Juliet, as today in most cultures arranged marriages are considered to be unfair and they believe that a woman should have the right to marry who she wishes. However, to an Elizabethan audience, an arranged marriage would be completely normal. In the Elizabethan era, marriage was seen as a means of gaining property, friends and wealth. Therefore marriages were usually arranged for daughters by their parents. A masked ball is arranged by Capulet order to allow Juliet to see Paris; he is giving his daughter a chance to meet Paris before they marry. This is quite unusual for an Elizabethan family as usually the daughter had no say in who she wanted to marry. This shows the parental love and concern he has for his daughter, despite cultural traditions at that time, he wants what is best for her and is taking her views into consideration.
Shakespeare uses metaphors in the speech between the two lovers to express the deep attraction and tension between the two. For example when Romeo first sets eyes on Juliet he is in awe. He expresses himself in a much exaggerated way in the sonnet using metaphors, “She doth teach the torches to burn bright”. This not only tells us that Juliet's beauty is greater than that of the torches but that she is so much brighter that she teaches the torches how to shine - a poetic exaggeration (or hyperbole). It is important for Romeo to say this, as the audience cannot see Juliet's beauty directly because in Shakespeare's theatre a boy, perhaps seen at some distance would be playing the part of Juliet (women were not allowed to act in the theatre). But the metaphor also tells the audience that it is night (as Romeo can see the torches he compares her to).
Light and dark imagery throughout the play is rife. Light is used to represent love, purity, beauty, life and hope. Romeo describes Juliet as being the sun, brighter than the light of the torch, stars, snowy white dove or jewel sparkling. Often the images of light and dark appear to relate to images to do with eyes, or with looking and seeing. Whereas dark imagery portrays everything from the feud of the two families to death, hatred, sadness and secrecy. At the beginning of the play Romeo seeks out darkness because he is depressed as his love is not returned by Rosaline and later on he and Juliet welcome the night because they can safely be alone.
Romeo and Juliet's speech (in the form of a sonnet) to each prior to the kiss is full of religious overtones. Shakespeare introduced a religious theme principally because the society that Romeo and Juliet lived in was highly religious and to make the scenes between ‘Romeo and Juliet’ acceptable. Romeo and Juliet are quite physical and forward with each other. The bulk of the conversation between the two that takes place is to do with touching hands and kissing. This would be perfectly normal to a modern day audience but quite risqué to an Elizabethan audience.
Romeo, “If I profane with my unworthiness hand, this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this. My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand. To smooth rough touch with a tender kiss.”
Juliet, “Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much. Which mannerly devotion shows in this; For saints have hand that pilgrims' hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.”
The religious overtones (holy shrines, saints, pilgrims, devotion and prayer) in the conversations imply that their love is pure and holy. However, Shakespeare ensures that the audience is not totally lost in the couple’s lovemaking, by inserting the knowledge that Tybalt has discovered Romeo’s identity. Tybalt (Juliet’s cousin), has a strong love for his family honour. He hears Romeo’s voice and realises that there are Montagues present. Tybalt is furious and tells a servant to bring his sword, “This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier, boy”. Capulet overhears Tybalt, telling him that Romeo is well regarded in Verona and that he is not to be harmed at his feast. Tybalt agrees to keep the peace, but vows that he will not let this insult pass.
“My lips two blushing pilgrims ready stand” ,this sonnet with its metaphor of pilgrims elevates Romeo's love as it lends a spiritual overtone to the physical attraction that Romeo feels when he first sees Juliet and exclaims.
When Romeo speaks to Juliet he compares her hand to a holy place (“shrine”) which he may defile (“profane”) with his hand. He compares his lips to pilgrims that can “smooth” away the “rough touch” of the hand with a kiss.
“Gentle sin” is what we call an oxymoron - a contradiction. In the 16th Century gentle meant noble or virtuous while a sin is usually the opposite of noble. Juliet explains that handholding is the right kind of kiss for pilgrims, while lips are for praying. Romeo's witty response is to ask for permission to let his lips do what his hands are allowed to, and Juliet agrees to “grant” this for the sake of his prayers. When Romeo kisses her, Juliet says she has received the sin he has “purged” from himself. Romeo insists at once that he must take it back - and kisses her again. An Elizabethan audience would be outraged to see this as their love would be exceeding all of the conventional rules.
In order to find out who Romeo is without arousing suspicion to herself, she asks her nurse, “go ask his name – if he be married, my grave is to be my wedding bed”. This highlights Juliet’s youth and naivety and causes empathy to be built for the character. The comment, “my grave is to by my wedding bed”, means that she will die if she cannot marry him. This line can be very moving to the audience, as it reminds the audience of the tragic ending foreshadowed in the prologue. The audience knows that shortly after marriage, Juliet will die and then Romeo.
“His name is Romeo, and a Montague, the only son of your great enemy.” When finally she learns from her nurse that the man she has fallen in love with is a Montague. Juliet is overcome with anguish and cries, “My only love sprung from my only hate”, she is distraught that finally she has found true love and it is for the only enemy of her family. This line foreshadows the theme of love and hate, and how they are intertwined, and the effects they have on Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. Juliet’s despair can be detected from the strength of her language, “I must love a loathed enemy”. Shakespeare foreshadows the themes of love and hate and reminds the audience again of the feud.
Shakespeare has predominantly devoted Act 2 scene 2 to Romeo and Juliet. It’s in this scene where the two lovers pronounce their love for each other and agree to marry the next day. This is a contrast to the artificial 'courtly love' played out by Romeo for Rosaline earlier in the play. This is the scene in which Juliet proposes marriage. In Elizabethan days it would have been very unusual for a woman to do the proposing but, as we learned when Paris talks to Lord Capulet, not all that unusual for teenagers (Juliet was not yet even 14 years old) to become married.
The play begins with soliloquies between Romeo and Juliet. The audience can hear what both characters are saying but the two characters cannot hear each others. This allows the audience to know what the characters are feeling and thinking, creating dramatic irony.
This scene is crucial in reaffirming the importance of names and their relevance. Juliet’s soliloquy tells us a lot about her nature and gives the audience clues as to how she will behave in a relationship. “What Montague? It nor hand, nor foot”, here Juliet questions why Romeo must be her enemy. Juliet refuses to believe that Romeo is defined by being a Montague, and therefore believes that she should be able to love him without social repercussions.
In this scene Shakespeare again makes much use of Stars, moon, and sun in the sonnet that takes between the two lovers. Astrology was an integral part of Italian society and culture. Many people believed that the stars dictated the outcome of wars and foretold the future. It was not unusual for noble families in Italy to have horoscopes drawn for their children upon birth, and even government leaders employed courtly astrologers to advise them on important issues of state. Throughout ‘Romeo and Juliet’, references are made to supernatural forces at work and suggestions are continually put forward that fate is inextricably linked to the stars.
Romeo, “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars”
This line is reminding the audience of the prologue and the fate of the two lovers. The attention that Shakespeare bestows to the love theme makes it remarkably romantic as this scene contains some of the most beautiful language as well as the famous scene commonly known as ‘the balcony scene’, (so called because it is often staged with Juliet on a balcony, although Shakespeare’s takes place with Juliet looking down at Romeo from a window). Shakespeare physically separates the lovers from the rest of the play (outside the feuding and quarrelling). Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of the Balcony Scene has Romeo and Juliet in a pool.
After the ball Romeo decides he cannot go home, but instead ventures into the Capulet mansion regardless of the dangers, again highlighting the fact that their love overtakes everything else. The orchard is a complete contrast to the crowded ball, here they are alone. Romeo ventures into the moonlit garden and stands in the shadows beneath Juliet’s bedroom window. Juliet appears on the balcony and thinking she’s alone, reveals in a soliloquy her love for Romeo. She is upset over the feud between the two families and the problems the feud presents. Romeo listens and when Juliet calls on him to “doff” his name, he steps from the darkness saying, “call me but love.”
Shakespeare describes the natural quality of their love by comparing the balcony scene with Mercutio’s lewd sexual jokes in the previous scene. Romeo returns to the religious imagery used between the lovers in their sonnets at the feast when he describes Juliet as, “a bright angel” and “dear saint.” The recurring use of religious imagery emphasizes the purity of Romeo and Juliet’s love as distinguished from the nurse’s and Mercutio’s understanding of love, which is physical and sexual.
The two characters speak to each other in a fourteen line sonnet. Traditionally, sonnets are spoken by one person. Women were supposed to be silent. The social structure of the Elizabethan family assured the subjugation of woman under man. Daughters remained under the care of their fathers until they were married, at which time they became subject to their husband's authority. Shakespeare gives Juliet an equal platform to express herself. By doing this not only does Shakespeare highlight the mutual love between Romeo and Juliet but gives women equal status.
Light and dark imagery reaches a climax in this scene. As mentioned earlier Shakespeare uses light imagery to initially represent a symbol of beauty, love and good. Whereas dark imagery to represent feuding, anger and evil. In this scene dark imagery is not just looked upon as representing negative things. Shakespeare presents the dark as a safe haven for Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet's love is a light in the midst of the darkness of the hate around them, but all of their activity together is done in night and darkness, while all of the feuding is in the daylight.
This contrast of light and dark can also be expanded as symbols to contrasting love and hate, youth and age in a metaphoric way. Sometimes these intertwining metaphors create dramatic irony. For example here in Romeo’s long, impassioned description of Juliet in the balcony scene Romeo uses several light images about the way he views Juliet such as, “Juliet is the sun”, meaning Juliet is beautiful, dominant of the skies and most importantly, light giving. Romeo imagines that Juliet is the sun, rising from the east to banish the night. In effect, he says that she is transforming night into day.
The light theme in the play is also heavily connected to the theme of time, since light was a convenient way for Shakespeare to express the passage of time through descriptions of the sun, moon, and stars. Romeo and Juliet’s experience of time is often fast paced and forward looking as when true love occurs time goes slowly. Later on in the scene Romeo complains of the light showing that he does not want the day to come. He says “the worse to want thy light” because it shows that their time together is coming to an end as the days fly by. Romeo is afraid that this meeting with Juliet has only been a dream.
Juliet says their love is quick and sudden, like a flash of lightning. Romeo is intoxicated by his passion and love for Juliet, but she says, “It is too rash, too unadvis’d, too sudden; too like lightning which doth cease to be”. In a way, Juliet is correct, as their love will indeed be a brief flash of light in the darkness of the feud between the two families and the looming death that beholds them, another example of light and dark imagery laced with dramatic irony.
The flower imagery used to describe Romeo by his father earlier in the play, “the bud bit with an envious worm”, is repeated when Juliet uses the metaphor of a rose to describe Romeo “by which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet”. This reminds the audience how Romeo felt for Rosaline and that although Romeo’s love has changed; he is still Romeo and loves in the same manner. Also, the word ‘envious’ is repeated, “Kill the envious moon”. Romeo uses it to presumably describe the negatives in life, whereas his father uses it to describe love, without knowing it. Romeo too could be describing love, after all love does prove cruel and treacherous in conclusion to this play. Juliet uses a rose as a simile to express her point of names, “which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet”.
Towards the end when both lovers say their reluctant farewell, Shakespeare once again introduces the bird imagery (act 1 scene 5, Romeo compared Juliet to a snowy dove amongst black crows). It's almost dawn and Romeo is reluctant to leave, he tells her that he's willing to stand there forever and forget that he has any other home, but Juliet tells him that she wants him to go. But not too far, "And yet no further than a wanton's (spoiled child's) bird; Who lets it hop a little from her hand, Like a poor prisoner in his twisted gives (shackles). And with a silk thread plucks it back again". Romeo wishes that he were her bird, and Juliet answers, "Sweet, so would wish yet I should kill thee with much cherishing”. "Cherishing" is not only "loving," but the petting as when one pets a beloved pet (dog or cat). If Romeo were Juliet's bird on a string, she would never let him go.
But before she finally lets him go she promises to “follow thee my lord throughout the world”. This is full of dramatic irony and foreshadows the final scene of the play, when Juliet follows Romeo into death. Interruptions from the Nurse add to the atmosphere of intense urgency as the lovers frantically say farewell. The heightened anticipation of their forthcoming marriage continues to build further tension and increase the pace of the play.
In both scenes (act 1 scene 5 and act 2 scene 2) it is evident from both scenes that the love shared between the two lovers is extremely passionate and is dangerous to them as well as their family and friends. These scenes foreshadow the marriage due to religious implications, Tybalt’s death (due to his anger of Romeo’s presence in the masked ball) and the death of both Romeo and Juliet. Also, these two scenes link the prologue as the foreshadowed death of the two protagonists is confirmed. This much anticipated scene, in which the two protagonists first meet, lifts the play off the ground and soaring into a whirlwind of tragedy.
Although ‘Romeo and Juliet’ had been written 400 years ago Shakespeare’s play is still revered in this day age, despite the fact that times have changed, language has evolved and there has been many cultural and social changes. The issues that pervade Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet’ of honour, duty, loyalty, politics, family and love are timeless, and for this reason they remain relevant for modern audiences. Shakespeare’s unparallel combination of love and tragedy, in which the love is touching but daunting, still has audience’s young and old queuing up regardless of what cultural or social background they are from. The language used to describe the love of Romeo and Juliet is so powerful, all other differences are forgotten, hence building empathy for the characters, allowing us, the audience to revel in the wonders of the tragedy of the two “star crossed lovers”.
