How Does Shakspeare Portray Love In Romeo And Juliet

Authors Avatar

How does Shakespeare portray love in ‘Romeo and Juliet’?

  ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a famous, tragic love story; about two ‘star cross’d lovers’ whose ‘untimely death’ eventually ‘buries their parents’ strife’ and reunites their families. The two families are alike in dignity but still despise each other due to an ‘ancient feud’.  

  Love is the play’s dominant and most important theme. The play focuses mostly on romantic love. Shakespeare portrays love by using Romeo and Juliet’s intense and passionate love affair to show the audience that there is more to love than romance. He is showing us that love is violent and has hidden depths, and that love is overpowering often causing families to split. It causes brutal and powerful responses from people; and it causes death, violence and hatred. Shakespeare is not interested in portraying love as a happy and dainty version of the emotion, but instead as a powerful emotion that captures individuals, turns them against others and sometimes even themselves.

  The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ was not actually an original idea from Shakespeare but it was based on a dramatisation of Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem ‘The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet’ which was a retelling of a tale by Ovid in ‘Metamorphoses’ called ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’.  This was a tale about Pyramus and Thisbe who are lovers although their parents despise each other. This old tale is very similar to Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Pyramus And Thisbe are passionate lovers who are together although their parents despise each other; eventually Pyramus kills himself because he believes that Thisbe is dead, this consequently causes Thisbe to commit suicide because she wants to join her lover and believed that her world was nothing without him. Being very similar to what happens to Romeo and Juliet.  

 Shakespeare’s play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is very dramatically structured. He begins the play with the chorus to give the audience a summary of the play. The Chorus is also foreshadowing what is going to happen throughout the play. We can see Romeo and Juliet struggling to maintain happiness in the future and know that they will always be doomed to fail. This is because love and death are both said in this opening Chorus like when Shakespeare says that romeo and juliets love is ‘death-marked’ and that ‘lovers take their life’. The Prologue is written in the form of a sonnet which is a commonly used form of love poetry. The prologue hints out the key events that are going to happen in the play.  

Join now!

At the beginning of the play love is portrayed as a depressing emotion. It reveals to us just how deeply love is affecting Romeo. His depression is brought on buy his unrequited love for Rosaline. The way Romeo acts shows us that he is love sick. The language Shakespeare uses conveys a gloomy picture of love. Romeo is crying and sighing ‘with tears augmenting the fresh mornings dew adding to clouds more clouds with his deep sighs.’ He also stays in the dark and as soon as daylight begins to show he closes his curtains so he can go ...

This is a preview of the whole essay