Benvolio’s attitude to love is that you should not morn over a woman for too long because there are lots of women that are better than her, he believes that the cure for love is to look at more girls, “Tut, man, one fire burns out another’s burning, one pain is lessened by another’s anguished.” This is Benvolio's advice to Romeo when he hears of his problem. Mercutio likes to use a lot of sexual innuendo when talking to Romeo about love, “If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will he sit under a medlar tree.” He uses many sexual innuendos when talking to Romeo, because he likes teasing him.
From the adult’s point of view, marriage is all about money and family pride. The adult’s such as the Capulet’s and the Montague’s believe that you should not marry someone because you love them but because that person has a lot of money or they are a family friend like Paris. To be chosen as a spouse you must be rich, like the person, you wish to marry and be a good friend of the family he or she belongs to. Paris asks to marry Juliet and offers to keep the generations of the Capulet’s going, “And pity ‘tis, you lived at odds so long.” Lord Capulet’s reply to this proposal was, “My child is yet a stranger in the world, She hath not yet seen the change of fourteen years.” When Lady Capulet tells Juliet of the news about her marriage, she talks for a while, then she drops a few hints about Juliet getting married and after that, she tells her about the marriage. Juliet’s response was not what Lady Capulet was hoping it would be like, Juliet was very angry that her mother and father wanted her to marry Paris because she did not love him and wanted to marry someone that she did love.
Romeo and Juliet fall in love when Romeo, dangerously sneaks into the Capulet’s party, after being depressed soon after he was turned down by Rosaline. Romeo and Juliet meet very romantically because as soon as they see each other, without saying a word, they instantly fall in love, “O she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night.” They learn that it is wrong because they are from disputing families but they decide that they must go on seeing each other because of their undying love for each other. “Star-cross’d lovers” throughout the play this is what Romeo and Juliet’s secret relationship was referred to because it describes them in one, ill-fated lovers. The audience can tell through Romeo’s sudden change in affections that he was never truly in love with Rosaline but he is greatly in love Juliet.
The Nurse helps Romeo and Juliet in their marriage by keeping their relationship secret. Friar Lawrence aided their marriage by also keeping it a secret but in addition to that he married them and he tried to get them back together by giving Juliet a poison that would kill her for a day. Both the Nurse and Friar Lawrence assisted in the secret marriage of Romeo and Juliet because the Friar is a good friend of Romeo’s and the Nurse is like a mother to Juliet. The Nurse wanted to see Juliet happy because she lost her daughter when she was very young and since then, she as treated Juliet as her daughter.
Looking at act 3 scene 4 and act 3 scene 5 I can tell that Juliet's parents do not really care about what Juliet wants, her needs don’t need to be seen to. All they care about is that they keep their friends happy by letting them marry her and that she inherits lots of money and land when her husband dies, “To go with Paris to Saint Peter’s Church, or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.” This also indicates that Lord and Lady Capulet’s marriage was arranged and very traditional because Lord Capulet is very aggressive and Lady Capulet is helpless, she cannot do anything to stop him, so she decides it best if she agrees with him. The Nurse’s reaction to what was happening was to attempt to defend poor Juliet, but knew that she could not step in while Lord and Lady Capulet were there because she is only a servant.
I think that Shakespeare is making a statement about marriage and love in this play as a lesson to the audience. I believe this because he puts the message across that marriage should not be just about money and keeping the generations of families going, it should be about love, and you should let your child decide who they marry because they should be happy and hopefully they will find there one true love. Romeo and Juliet raise a fair amount of questions about love and marriage. What is true love? There is no answer to this question; it can only be answered by the person who asked it. You can’t describe true love, as you see during the play. Only the individual who asked the question knows what their true love will be. For Romeo it was Juliet, for Juliet it was Romeo.
By Andrew Read
