Lady and Lord Montague and Lady and Lord Capulet are shown to have different relationships but both have conventional romantic love. The Montagues really love each other and are not married for status, this is shown by Lady Montague saying “thou shalt not stir one foot to seek a foe” when restraining her husband from fighting the Capulets. Lady Montague is restraining her husband as she is afraid that if he fights, he will get hurt. However the Capulets are married for status and money. This is shown by Lady Capulet mocking her husband when he asks for his sword, “A crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword?” Lady Capulet is saying here that she thinks Lord Capulet is too old to fight. The marriages of Romeo and Juliet and their parents contrast as they are married for love not money and status.
Lady Montague is also shown to have family love towards Romeo, by saying ‘O where is Romeo? Saw you him today? Right glad I am he was not at this fray’ she is showing that she loves her son and is happy that he was not at the scene of the fight in case he got hurt.
Conventional romantic love is the same for what Romeo has for Rosaline. Romeo thinks he's in love and moans over Rosaline. Much of teenage love is simply in the head, you think that you have found the "only one," when you've really only found an obsession. Benvolio explains to Lady Montague that Romeo is under ‘the grove of sycamore.’ ‘Sycamore’ is the French word coming from ‘sick’ and ‘amore,’ Benvolio is explaining to the Montagues that Romeo has ‘love sickness.’ Romeo tells Benvolio that he is in love with Rosaline, but that she does not return his feelings and has in fact sworn to live a life of purity, shown by ‘ And in strong proof of chastity well-armed’ this is explaining that Rosaline is saying she wants to join a nunnery and never have a sexual relationship. Romeo uses rhyming couplets which make what he says sound more like a well rehearsed speech rather than a true expression of emotional torments. Romeo is acting over the top when Benvolio mentions that Romeo has been staying up all night and sleeping all day. Romeo says it will stop when Rosaline decides to love him. Here Romeo is being over the top.
Another couple who have conventional love is Paris and Juliet. Paris has an arranged marriage to Juliet given permission from Lord Capulet. Paris has never met Juliet but wants to marry her sooner rather than later shown when Lord Capulet says ‘let two more summers wither in their pride’ which Paris replies to ‘younger than she are happy mother’s made’ Capulet doesn’t want to give over his child sooner because he believes she may die in childbirth and because she is his only child. Capulet says that he loves his daughter and wants her to have a choice by saying ‘My will to her consent is a part.’ He is saying this as he shows paternal love towards her and wants her to be happy, whatever the cost is.
Family love is shown between the nurse and Juliet as the nurse would have been the wet nurse who would have fed the baby. The nurse has a long and close relationship with Juliet, which is shown when Lady Capulet calls her back to join the discussion about her proposed marriage to Paris, shown by ‘Nurse, give leave a while – we must talk in secret. –nurse, come back again’ this is showing the audience that Lady Capulet is not at ease with her daughter and needs the nurses help to convince her to get married. The nurse at the end of act 1 scene 3 is happy because Juliet is going to be married as the nurse thinks of Juliet as a daughter.
The nurse is shown to have bawdy love also. She is shown to have sexual mind towards Juliet ‘fall backward when thou comest to age, wilt thou not, Jule?’ meaning that she is telling Juliet to have sex. She also mentions sex when she says to Juliet at the end of act 1 scene 3 ‘Go, girl. Seek happy nights’ meaning again having sex. The nurse jokes towards Juliet about sex, as they are comfortable with each other. The nurse thinks of Juliet as a daughter as she lost her daughter at a young age. The nurse plays an important part in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as she is the one who tells Juliet to follow her heart and marry Romeo.
Benvolio is a peacemaker in the story ‘I do but keep the peace’ . Benvolio contrasts to Tybalt as he is not wanting the fight whereas Tybalt is aggressive Benvolio is shown to have practical love as he is cautious unlike Romeo who is outgoing. Benvolio is trusted by the Montagues and the Prince.
Mercutio is shown to have bawdy love as he is always making jokes and teasing someone ‘if love be rough with you, be rough with love’. He contrast with the other characters that show bawdy love as he educated and doesn’t speak in prose. He contrasts with Romeo as he acting quite young whereas Romeo is maturing. Mertcutio is intensely loyal to Romeo as he intervenes when fighting against Tybalt.
The love between Romeo and Juliet is true love. When they meet there is spiritual love (love at first sight.) Romeo sees Juliet and is stunned by her beauty. He associates her with glowing light, and says she shines like a rich jewel, he also compares her to a snowy dove among crows and says she is ‘blessed.’ Romeo forswears his love for Rosaline at once. In those days it was unacceptable that a girl and a boy kiss before they are married as it shows that the girl is impure. In those days the fact that Romeo and Juliet kissed was unacceptable because a girl should always have a chaperon nearby. This is also saying that Juliet is rebelling. Their formal use of language has a dignified pace and stresses the purity and sincerity of their love for each other. Romeo and Juliet when they speak, they speak in a sonnet which shows that they are really in love as a sonnet is a traditional love poem. When Juliet finds out that Romeo is a Montague she says that if she cannot marry Romeo she will die for love, this is shown when Juliet says ‘My grave is to be my wedding bed.’ This is giving us a peppered image of death and of what to come. This is foreshadowing what will come in the end of the play. Juliet is distraught that she has found her only love within the family she has been brought up to hate.
Act 5
The first type of love shown in act 5 is between Romeo and Balthasar which is family love. It is show when Balthasar comes to tell Romeo that his Juliet is dead. He feels that it is his duty to tell Romeo as he thinks of him as a brother figure. When Romeo asks of his wife ‘how fares my Juliet?’ Balthasar replies with ‘then she is well, and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel’s monument’, is meaning that she is dead but didn’t know how to tell him. This is irony because she looks dead but is actually sleeping. Balthasar wants to protect Romeo from hurting himself by saying ‘your looks are pale and wild, and do import some misadventure.’ Meaning that he is so distraught that he looks sick and that he may hurt himself.
When Romeo talks of Juliet in his soliloquy he echoes the image of death lying with Juliet, with its sexual as well as literal meaning “well Juliet, I will lie with thee tonight’ literally meaning that he will die next to her. This is also foreshadowing what might happen in the end of the play.
Friar Lawrence shows family love when he hears about the letter he sent to Romeo not arriving to him. He is thrown in to despair by the news. He immediately goes down to the tomb where Juliet is to try and save her and Romeo. This is as he knows that if Romeo arrives to the tomb he will do something that Friar Lawrence can’t stop. The build up of tension is therefore increased when we find him in haste, talking of danger and sending for a crow bar.
When Paris is shown to come to Juliet’s tomb it is courtly love. Paris has come at night to Juliet’s tomb to visit his ‘sweet flower’, put flowers on her grave and pay his respects to his almost wife. Although he seems rather formal and sentimental in his speech, he is genuinely sincere, in the same way that Romeo was sincere in his love-sickness for Rosaline. His comment hearing his servants warning whistle is ironic because he says ‘what cursed foot wanders this way tonight’ ironic because it is Romeo. Paris thinks that Romeo has come to pursue the family feud by revenging himself on Juliet’s dead body. Paris interrupts him with unconscious irony and tells him ‘thou must die.’ Romeo kills Paris. This confrontation is the only time where Romeo meets Paris.
Romeo and Juliet show true love at the end of the play. Romeo says he will bury Paris with Juliet but that it will not be a grave but in a ‘lantern’, this is meaning that because of Juliet’s beauty, she makes the tomb ‘full of light.’ Again Romeo comments on the beauty of Juliet to being brilliant light, even in death. The lovers’ passion has been described by the imagery as almost religious and heavenly. The Friar warned them that too much passion was dangerous and would consume itself ‘like fire and powder.’ Romeo’s final speech in the play is a beautiful soliloquy in which death is spoken of as sucking ‘the honey’ of Juliet’s breath. Romeo does not realise that the colour is returning to her lips and cheeks because she is about to wake up and thinks instead that ‘death is amorous’ and keeps her ever-beautiful in the tomb to be his lover. Romeo drinks the poison and dies. A few lines later Juliet awakes and asks for him by name. Juliet cannot find a ‘friendly’ drop of poison in Romeos hand. Instead she pulls the dagger out and kills herself to be with her one and true love.
At the end of the play Capulet asks for Montague’s hand in peace. The families agree. They decide to end the feud based on the fact that their children love each other. The families decide together to lay their children next to each other, by a statue of gold. ‘For I will raise her statue in pure gold’ Montague says he will put up a statue of Juliet because she was his sons wife and he wants to honour his son’s wife.
