Shakespeare's portrayal of love in Sonnets 18 and 116, and in Romeo and Juliet.

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Candidate name: Dylan Gunda

Candidate number: 1037

Centre Number: 20093

Explore how Shakespeare presents the idea of love through an extract of Romeo and Juliet an a selection of sonnets  

Love has changes a lot since Shakespeare’s time, these modern times love is a term used very loosely, Now everybody feels that they understand the meaning of love and all of the emotions that are involved init and even people of a young age such as 10 can say that they love  a person off there own age.

Where as in Shakespeare’s time they linked love with things of great importance such as religion.

Through out most of his poems and sonnets Shakespeare based most of his ideas on love which has carried through into modern days. Love was a very influential thing in his poets because it was not just love between a man and a women it was all sorts of different love such as a farther son bond which might have influenced him throughout the fair youth series. And love between a man and a woman was included which might have influenced him to write his dark lady series.

Act 1 scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet has many key features. One of the most important parts of Romeo and Juliet is where Romeo spots Juliet in the ball and starts to speak in soliloquy .Whilst speaking in soliloquy Romeo says “She doth teach the torches to burn bright!” this tells me that he believes that she is so stunningly beautiful that she is able t teach things to things that don’t need teaching.

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Once they start speaking they use an extended Christian metaphor of Juliet lips being a shrine and his lips being “two blushing pilgrims” which indicates to me that I those times in order to get a girl you had to make it innocent and make you attraction to the person sacred.

During this conversation Romeo took more of a commanding role whilst Juliet was putting on a front that she was not interested in him but in reality she was, fulfilling the traditions of courtly love, I know this because when Romeo calls her a shrine and compares himself to ...

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