Romeo and Juliet is not only a story of their love, but also the love between other characters. Paris is in love with Juliet who is in love with Romeo, Romeo was in love with Rosaline (who doesn’t love him anymore) but becomes in love with Juliet. Love between Romeo and his family, and Juliet and her family is also to be found in the play. The story tells us how love can change lives, and what consequences can occur from it. Juliet, before she was in love with Romeo, obeyed her parents, and was an innocent girl. But after she fell in love with Romeo, she became devious and highly focused. Romeo, on the other hand, went from being unsociable and upset (because he broke up with Rosaline whom he deeply loved) to being sociable and happy after he met Juliet and fell in love with her.
Foreshadowing is a very important element in the play and is found throughout. Romeo once dreamt that Juliet saw him dead, “I dreamt my lady came and found me dead”, and later on in the play Juliet did really find Romeo dead. Juliet loved Romeo so much, that she states, “If he be married, my grave is like to be my wedding bed.” This foreshadows the death of Juliet later on in the play, as Juliet later does die, next to Romeo, married and kissing him, as if it were their wedding bed. Another example of foreshadowing is when the Nurse says that she might live to see Juliet married once, and she did, “An I might live to see thee married once”. Mercutio chants “A plague o’ both your houses” three times, before he dies, which means a curse will be brought on both the Montagues and Capulets. This is yet another example of foreshadowing, as the curse is that Romeo of the Montagues, and Juliet of the Capulets, both commit suicide and die. The final example of foreshadowing is when Juliet says “Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low
As one dead in the bottom of a tomb”. She is saying that she will end up dead in the bottom of a tomb, as she can’t see Romeo upset.
After the disorder at the beginning of the play, nearly all the hatred is brought about as a result of love. For example, if Romeo hadn’t fallen in love with Juliet at the masked ball, Tybalt wouldn’t have recognised him. Love drove him to speak in the way that he does. If Tybalt hadn’t spotted Romeo, he wouldn’t have hated him as much. Lord Capulet wouldn’t have found out. The fight between Tybalt, Mercutio and Romeo would have never existed if Mercutio would have still been alive. Other rivalries would have never have been created if Romeo hadn’t fallen in love with Juliet.
Another example of Juliet’s hatred towards her family is when she implies that she dislikes her parents and her cousin Tybalt, and that she likes Romeo a lot more, after she hears of Romeo’s banishment, “That ‘banished’, that one word ‘banished’, Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts”, “Why followed not, when she said, ‘Tybalts dead’, ‘Thy Mother’, nay, or both,’ ” and also “ ‘Romeo is banished’! To speak that word
Is father, mother, Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet
All slain, all dead: ‘Romeo is banished’!” show this. She’s meaning to say that love has taken over her life, and that she’d rather see her parents die than to see Romeo banished. She says that she would rather also see Tybalt slain ten thousand times more than to see Romeo banished. Here, love has really made Juliet act illogically.
Juliet was ambivalent when she heard that her lover Romeo has killed her ‘best friend’, her cousin Tybalt. She refers Romeo to an ‘honourable villain’. She is, on one hand, making fun about Romeo for killing Tybalt, and how he lied to her about being kind and not a villain, and also weeping for Tybalt. On the other hand she is regretting Romeo’s banishment, and saying how much she loves him. She even regrets speaking ‘ill’ of Romeo! , “Shall I speak ill of him that is my husband?”
But it were not only Juliet who speaks cruelly of her family; Lord and Lady Capulet both were very angry and upset about Juliet refusing to marry Paris. They hate her for loving a ‘loathed enemy’, and also for loving the murderer of Tybalt. Lady Capulet first said about Juliet and Romeo, to her husband, “I would the fool were married to her grave”. This quotation by Lady Capulet foreshadows what happens to both Romeo and Juliet at the end of the play, as they both did die married. Lord Capulet later shouts at Juliet, “Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage!
You tallow-face!” He also calls Juliet ‘young baggage’. He then says to his wife Lady Capulet, “that we have a curse, in having her.”
Lord Capulet is so furious here that he regrets having Juliet as his child. He wants to kick her out of the house, “Out on her, hilding!” This one scene, 3.5, really shows the hatred of Juliet’s parents towards her. The Nurse, as she loved Juliet, says “God in Heaven bless her!
You are to blame, my lord, to rate her so.”
Lord Capulet then insults the Nurse, and from then on, doesn’t trust her, “And why, my lady wisdom? Hold your tongue,
Good prudence smatter with your gossips, go!” and then “Peace you mumbling fool!”, “For here we need it not”. Lord Capulet is telling the Nurse here that he does not want her interference. The Nurse then decides to turn against Juliet, but in a discreet manner, hoping that Juliet will not realise. But she does, and when the Nurse leaves, Juliet calls her “Ancient Damnation” (insults her age and appearance), and also a “wicked fiend”. In this scene, Juliet begins to despise the Nurse, after the Nurse tries to protect her (with love). It was love here that caused hatred, and as before, hatred always follows love. The Nurse, however, doesn’t annoy Juliet here for the first time, though. She turns into a hated character, not only by Juliet, but also by the reader/audience, when she hesitates and lies about telling Juliet the news and truth about something serious, for the second time. The first time is when she makes Juliet impatient by holding the news about what Romeo says about his and Juliet’s marriage, and the second time is when she lies about Romeo being banished. She lets the true news out, though, after a while in both cases. Friar Laurence has also done a same sort of thing; turning into a hated character. He achieves this, as if it were, by trying to ‘resurrect Juliet’. He tries to make Juliet be Jesus, and play God himself. This is considered bizarre for a holy man such as Friar Laurence to do. He also decided to get involved, and he’s therefore ignorant. Most religious Christians hated him for doing so at the time of Shakespeare, and his act was easily recognised.
It is not only other people and characters that hate each other; Romeo at one point even hates himself for being banished, and therefore tries to stab himself. He also said, “Then ‘banished’
is death mistermed. Calling death ‘banished’
Thou cutt’st my head off with a golden axe”. He’s saying that being banished is as worse, or even worse, than dying, and that the two words basically mean the same thing. He also states that he’d rather decapitate himself with a golden axe. Note the ‘golden’; it signifies greediness and evil, and foreshadows when Lord Montague and Capulet decide to put statues up of both Romeo and Juliet made of gold, still competing greedily in having the better statue.
In conclusion, I think that Romeo and Juliet doesn’t tell us more about love than of hate - it tells us equally about both of the aspects. It is a story that consists of both love and hate, and therefore neither should be underestimated in this play. Every time we find out something about one aspect (love/hate), or when one of the aspects occurs, the other is triggered off in some way or the other. We learn that the two feuding families tell you more about hate, but the two lovers more about love. If the two lovers didn’t intervene, showing their love, the hate would have continued. Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet intervene with their families, showing their love for each other. Shakespeare used this and contrasted the two aspects of love and hate together, which ultimately creates the story.
