To her disgrace, Lady Capulet continues to force Juliet to marry Paris, resulting in her own beloved daughter’s death. Romeo finds her ‘dead’ mistakenly and takes poison due to take his own life, due to his sadness.
In this essay, I will answer the question ‘Is Romeo and Juliet about love or hate?’ I have decided I believe it is mainly about love, so will give my reasons why I believe this.
Firstly, one of the reasons it could be about hate is that straight away in Act 1, Scene 1, there is a fight between the Montagues’ and the Capulets’ boys. This sets the pace for the rest of the play, as it could be seen as though it revolves around violence from the start, and their dislike for the opposite family. They continuously throw insults at each other. For example, a fight starts over something as simple as one of the Montagues, Sampson, biting his thumb in the direction of Gregory Capulet. In the days when this play was written, this would have been seen as extremely rude, whereas now this would be seen as not a problem.
Tybalt in the play is intentionally portrayed as a slightly evil and very violent character. He often talks about his ongoing hate for the Montagues and always changes the atmosphere of the story into a dark and sinister one. He comes across as extremely fearless and believes no one could ever beat him in a fight. By creating such a horrible and violent character, whenever Tybalt comes onto the scene the audience are expecting a fight, or dispute. In the fight scene Tybalt is one of the main characters and the atmosphere does change dramatically, and the scene itself definitely revolves around hate. He says ‘ Peace, I hate the word, as I hate Hell, all Montagues and thee’. This is said in a slow and evil sounding tone, making Tybalt seem more disturbing. The sentence itself is evil, making the audience more scared for other characters. By doing this, we generally expect the play to match his character, however it does not.
In my opinion, the play is also largely revolved around love. Romeo is a prime example of the play being about love. Romeo is an extremely romantic character, and he is innocent looking from the start. He often talks about love, whether it is his love at the beginning for Rosaline, or later on towards Juliet. He often talks in rhyming couplets, for example, ‘grieves of my own lie heavy in my breast, which thou will propagate, to have it pressed’. The rhyming couplets that Shakespeare has given Romeo give the impression he is so passionate and caught up in love and that he can not talk in any other way than to express his feelings about his romance.
Whenever Romeo comes into the play, the atmosphere appears to change into a calm, romantic one, matching Romeo’s personality and behaviour. He gives the impression of him being a very kind and loving person to everyone. ‘O, she is rich in beauty, only poor, that when she dies with beauty dies her store.’ This is something you can only imagine an extremely romantic person saying.
In conclusion, I believe that Romeo and Juliet is a play about two conflicting emotions, love and hate. It shows that although they are different emotions they both play important parts in life. It looks closely at the different types of love, and how they affect the characters in the play.