Romeo soon forgets about Rosaline after he gatecrashes the Capulet’s ball and sees Juliet for the first time. It is love at first sight for Romeo. He uses poetic language and soliloquies to describe Juliet. He pictures how beautiful she is and uses similes to compare her to other people in the room:
‘It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.’
In a play the audience would realise that Romeo is in love and that every word he speaks is from his heart. He immediately says that he did not truly love Rosaline,
‘Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight,
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.’
From this we know that Romeo has decided that he has found true love and that he doesn’t need to look any longer.
He also describes Juliet as a ‘snowy dove trooping with crows’. The use of colour and imagery to show Juliet as a white dove amongst crows, which are usually black, tells us that Romeo thinks she is pure (white) while everyone else is ‘black’ and that she is beautiful against an ugly background.
When Romeo and Juliet first speak, their conversation is in the form of a sonnet. At the time sonnets where used to represent love and an Elizabethan audience would have recognised this. Also the fourteen lines of the sonnet are shared between Romeo and Juliet and this represents how close they are.
Romeo also describes her hand as a ‘shrine’ which ‘pilgrims’ (his lips) travel to worship. This tells us how beautiful her hand is and it gives the effect that Romeo is very much in love with Juliet.
However the atmosphere of love is quickly broken when Tybalt recognises Romeo as a Montague. He says:
‘This by his voice should be a Montague.
Fetch me my rapier, boy. What dares the slave…
…Now by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.’
When Tybalt says this he is outraged and when he talks about the death of Romeo it illustrates how strong the hatred actually is. Here Shakespeare uses two words that rhyme- ‘kin’ and ‘sin’. He uses this to great effect as it captures the audience’s attention.
When Capulet notices Tybalt he asks what is wrong and Tybalt says:
‘Uncle this is a Montague, our foe;
A villain that is hither come in spite,
To scorn at our solemnity this night.’
Tybalt says that Romeo is their opponent due to him being a Montague. In the time of Shakespeare the word ‘villain’ would be seen as an insult and therefore he would get a big reaction from the audience.
Shakespeare uses insults as a form of hate and this sets the scene completely away from the dreamy atmosphere that was created when Romeo was soliloquising about Juliet.
Capulet tries to calm the hatred of Tybalt, but Tybalt says that he will not tolerate it. This makes it seem as if Tybalt wants to ‘pick a fight’ with Romeo but Capulet does not want his party to be ruined by the intolerance of Tybalt.
Tybalt then exits with a strong worded speech:
‘I will withdraw, but this intrusion shall,
Now seeming sweet, convert to the bitterest gall.’
This shows that Tybalt threatens vengeance and it gives the effect that he thinks the name ‘Montague’ is a foul substance rather then an identity. Also it does not bode well for Romeo because Tybalt will clearly want revenge.
After Juliet leaves the ball, Romeo finds out that she is a Capulet:
‘O dear account! My life is in foe’s debt.’
Similarly when Juliet finds out Romeo is a Montague she says:
‘My only love sprung from my only hate,’
In these two instances Shakespeare brings the ideas of love and hate together and it shows how close the two feelings can be. Here love and hate contradict each other and it shocked Romeo that Juliet was a Capulet in the same way that Juliet was shocked when she found out that Romeo was Montague.
Another scene of love is the famous balcony scene. Juliet is talking without realising that Romeo is there. She says:
‘O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.’
She is saying that names are not important to her and this gives the effect that she still loves him regardless of his name.
When Romeo says:
‘My life were better ended by their hate,
Then death prorogued, wanting thy love.’
He means that he would rather be killed by Capulet’s than not have the love of Juliet. Shakespeare uses this to great effect because he shows how closely Romeo feels in love with Juliet.
In Act 3 Scene 1, Shakespeare shows the hatred of Tybalt once again. Tybalt is looking for a fight with Romeo. Romeo calmly refuses, but when family loyalty is at stake his friend Mercutio refuses to leave him dishonoured by Tybalt, a Capulet.
After Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo flies into such a rage that he frenziedly attacks Tybalt and kills him. In this scene Shakespeare shows the hatred between the two families by making them fight over insults.
Lady Capulet also portrays hate when she says: ‘For blood of ours shed blood of Montague.’ This gives the impression that the hatred is really deep, as Lady Capulet does not even know what has happened properly yet she wants the death of Romeo.
In Act 3 Scene 5 there is further evidence of Juliet’s love of Romeo when she says:
‘Indeed I never shall be satisfied
With Romeo, till I behold him-dead-
Is my poor heart so for a kinsman vexed’
Here Shakespeare uses irony to great effect as Lady Capulet thinks that Juliet is showing her hate for Romeo when she really is showing her love for him.
Apart from the love of Romeo and Juliet another type of love is the love between Juliet and the Nurse. We can see this because she is the only person Juliet confides in abut her love of Romeo. Also when Friar Lawrence tells Juliet about the potion he says:
‘Let not the nurse lie with thee in thy chamber.’
This suggests that the nurse also sleeps in Juliet’s chamber and this shows us how close they actually are. From it we can tell that the nurse is closer to Juliet than her mother, Lady Capulet, is. Although this may seem unusual to us now, in the time of Shakespeare this was common in many upper class families; as it was common for people of thirteen or fourteen to get married. And that is why Romeo and Juliet are married at such a young age.
Shakespeare produces a tragedy by contrasting love and hate to create different atmospheres. He also uses strong contrasting language throughout the play, which deals with the theme of love and hate.
You could say that love and hate run in parallel, which adds contrast to the scene such as Tybalt’s aggression to Romeo’s peacemaking and the love of Romeo and Juliet to the hate of the two families.
In most of Shakespeare’s ‘tragedies’, something always leads to the main character’s death. For example in the play ‘Macbeth’, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth die and in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Romeo and Juliet both die. But we do not feel sorry for Macbeth as his downfall was due to his own greed and selfishness whereas we do feel sorry for Romeo and Juliet, as their deaths were almost condemned to happen from the beginning of the play.
The structure of the play is built around love and hate. Shakespeare uses this structure very effectively to create a typical tragedy-‘Romeo and Juliet’.
