Describe Romeo and Juliet's love and the way it develops in the course of the play. (Look carefully at the language used and use short quotations to illustrate your answer.)

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Katherine Suzan

Describe Romeo and Juliet’s love and the way it develops in the course of the play. (Look carefully at the language used and use short quotations to illustrate your answer.)

Shakespeare meant for his plays to be performed on a stage and not to be read, he was a very skilled play write and he made his audiences believe things that in reality could not happen in such a short space of time.

Romeo and Juliet’s love for one another shows their disobedience towards their parents. The houses that the pair of ‘star cross’d lovers’ belong to are involved in an ‘ancient’ feud. We are made aware of the feud before we even meet the lovers; it is the very first thing that the Chorus, who is a single person on the stage which Shakespeare and many other play writes used to calm down a disorderly audience and give background information on the play, says:

‘Two households both alike in dignity

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,

From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.’

Their love is ill-fated from the moment they first meet, at Capulet’s party, because of the dispute that has been going on for generations.

When we first meet Romeo, his father Lord Montague describes Romeo’s melancholic mood, this fits exactly the contemporary ideas of lovesickness in Shakespeare’s time. Lord Montague and Benvolio contrast Romeo's feelings for Rosaline and how they have changed his personality. We can see that Romeo is not himself as he says:

‘Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here;

This is not Romeo, he’s some other where.’

The many oxymorons, Romeo uses in his speech are meant to suggest his confused state of mind:

                        ‘Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,

                        Still-waking sleep,’

Romeo sees Rosaline as the most beautiful woman on earth he matches her beauty to those of saints:

                        ‘When the devout religion of mine eye

                        Maintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fire!’

It seems that Romeo is only in love with the idea of being in love.

On our first meeting with Juliet her mother is calling her. She replies to her mother in a formal way:

                        ‘Madam, I am here. What is your will?’

She is modest, quiet and beautiful. Since she is from a powerful Verona family she is well dressed. When Lady Capulet suggests that the County Paris would make a good husband, Juliet responds:

                        ‘I’ll look to like, if looking liking move.

                        But no more deep will I endart mine eye

                        Than your consent gives strength to make it fly.’

In the times when the play was written it was normal for parents to arrange who their daughter would marry.

When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time his extravagant declarations of love for Rosaline vanish in a second. He now speaks with tenderness and plainness:

                        ‘Beauty to rich for use, for earth to dear!

                        So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,

                        As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.’

In the last line of his speech,

‘Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!

For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.’

What Romeo says, is that what he said earlier in the play was silly and wrong. Ironically, when Benvolio was persuading Romeo to go to the party he told him he would soon forget Rosaline and this is just what happened. Romeo anticipates the line of approach he will take during the dance by saying that her touch will ‘bless’ his hand. It was believed at this time that true love always struck at first sight; love that grew gradually was no love at all.

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                        ‘This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:

                        My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand’

This is a quick-witted bout of flirtation in which both sides are equally smitten, as is made clear by what follows, but in which Juliet plays the proper young girl's role of cutting up Romeo's ‘lines’ as fast as he can think them up.

‘Saints do not move, but grant for prayers’ sake.’

‘Then have my lips the sin that they have took.’ and

‘You kiss by the book.’

This shows Juliet to be much wittier than a typical ...

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