“You shall not house with me”.
To make up for the lack of love from the childrens parents they have surrogate parents. Romeo has the Friar who is like a father to him, we know this because he says “my ghostly father” which shows he sees the Friar as a father. Juliet on the other hand has a motherly figure, the nurse acts as a mother for Juliet, when Juliets parents tell her that they will disown her she asks for “some comfort, nurse” as she would have asked her mother to comfort her at this time.
Finally, the third type of love in the play is friendly love which is between Romeo and Mercutio. This type of love can also be seen between Juliet and tybalt although they are cousins. The love between Romeo and Mercutio can also be called homoerotic love as Mercutio sees Romeo as more than a friend.
Romeo plays the role of a tragic hero in the romantic love story. In the beginning of the play Romeo is in love with Rosaline who does not love him in return. In order to get a glimpse of his sweet love Rosaline, Romeo risks his life and goes to the Capulet ball where he meets Juliet and falls in love with her at first sight. Juliet loves Romeo as well, even after knowing that he is a Montague she says
“My only love sprung from my only hate!”
Juliet is the only daughter of Lord and Lady Capulet and is not greatly loved by the two. She id a youthful female and is far too young to get married as her father says
“My child is yet a stranger to the world; she hath not seen change of fourteen years”.
He says this when an offer of marriage has come to the family from a wealthy man named Paris.
The love between Romeo and Juliet is true love as well. It is also Juliets first love. She meets him at the Capulet ball where they both fall in love with each other at first sight. During there meeting Juliet says to Romeo
“and palm to palm is holy palm is holy palmers kiss”
This is religious imagery. Before long the love between the two becomes so close that Juliet is ready to give up her family for him.
“I’ll no longer be a Capulet”
She becomes so attached to her love that she says to him
“Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow”
Juliet is also loved by her nurse who plays a motherly role during this play. Although she had supported young Juliet throughout her life, she doesn’t think it is correct to run away from the family that love her for a child whose family is an enemy to the Capulet family, so soon Juliet looses trusts on her and starts hiding secrets from her.
Tybalt is a cousin to the Capulet family and loves to cause battles between the family and the Montagues. He is a troublemaker we know this because he says
“Peace I hate the word as I hate all Montagues and thee”
and is always up to mischief. This is his greatest weakness and that gets the better of him as later on in the play we see that a small quarrel with the Montague’s cause Mercutios death and later leads to his death as well.
There us a love between Tybalt and Juliet but this is seen as cousinly love towards her and is considered as a possible relationship within the family. Although he cares about Juliet, he takes his enmity more important and wishes the worst to happen on the family of the Montagues. But Juliet takes the same situation in a different way and cares for her love more than a blood relationship with Tybalt. She says
“is Romeo slaughtered; and Tybalt dead? My dearest cousin and my dearer lord”
she thinks of her cousin as dear but calls her husband “dearer lord” which shows she cares more about Romeo than Tybalt.
Another character who is close to Romeo is his closest friend Mercutio. Romeo loves Mercutio as a friend but Mercutio sees Romeo with homoerotic love on his mind Shakespeare has done this to keep the audience interested in the play. Mercutio is from neither of the families but dies fighting for Romeo. Whilst dieing he says
“you have made worms meat of me”
and curses both the families
“a plague upon both ur families”.
Mercutio is like mercury which is unstable he gets emotional very quickly.
Friar Lawrence is a fatherly figure to in the play and supports Romeo as well as Juliet. he helps both of them get married. He gives Juliet a potion to drink, that will make her fall asleep for “four and twenty” hours, and when the family think she has dies, Romeo would come and collect her from her sleep and they could go away together. Although this was a good idea, it was also the cause of the couples death. If Romeo had known of this plan, both he and Juliet would have been saved. But as the messenger was unable to deliver the message, Romeo had died.
During this play there are many similes and metaphors used to compare what each character is trying to say and attract the audiences attention. Juliet uses some metaphors such as
“My grave is like to be my wedding bed”
and
“my only love sprung from my only hate”.
These are all to describe the relationships of her and her true love.
Shakespeare has used monologues in all his play as an alternative to having a narrator. The idea of a monologue is that the person is telling there ideas as well as having a narration in the story. It is a good way to find out what the characters think to help us understand the play better. He also uses a sonnet in the beginning to set the scene.
In Shakespeares time this the things that happened in the play would have never happened. Because they where used to arranged marriages and there was no concept of love marriages. There is great relevance to todays world as the story fits more into what happens around us nowadays. For example Muslims do not marry other religions or Roman Catholics do not marry Protestants.
The performance of this play would have really got to the crowds because of the structure of the play. The audience would really be involved into the play as much as the characters. In theatres today the female roles are played by females but in Shakespeares time they would have been played by little boys as women where not allowed to act.