How do Romeo and Juliet develop mentally and emotionally in the play?

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How do Romeo and Juliet develop mentally

and emotionally in the play?

        In the play, both characters change dramatically. Shakespeare conveys this well and throughout the play he devises different confrontations and conversations which indicate the 2 main characters’ personality change.

        In the beginning, Romeo loves after a woman he has not even had a meaningful conversation with. He sulks and complains about his emotional misfortune with Rosaline.        

        Courtly love is not true love. Courtly love is arranged love, where people marry for status, and love is controlled. His sentences rhyme and his words seem calculated. They come from his head, not his heart.        

        “Alas that Love, whose view is muffled still,

         Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will.” Romeo’s love is clearly contrived. He follows the Courtly Love tradition. This couplet rhymes. It seems as though Romeo has planned all of his complaints beforehand, and he is in love with being in love rather that being in love properly.

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        Juliet, at the start of the play is inexperienced and vulnerable. She is wrapped in cotton wool by the Nurse, smothered and not allowed her own insight on the world. She had never been in love before she met Romeo. She would have carried on with life, and married the first man her mother set her up with. This almost happens. Paris, a kinsman of the Prince, represents one of the social pressures breaking in on her intimate relationship with Romeo.

        Juliet agrees to marry Paris, but not for the cause of love.

        “I’ll look to like, if looking ...

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