Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is considered the epitome of romantic text. When someone talks about doomed love or true love, they always go back to Romeo and his paramour. So much is made of the love story between the two, that the tragedy of the events has come to be misinterpreted as adding to the romance. With this misunderstanding has become this notion that Romeo and Juliet are interchangeable characters, their gender and their name being the only thing that divides the two as individuals. This is entirely untrue. When you do a close reading of the play and at the actual words Shakespeare uses, it becomes evident that Romeo and Juliet are indeed very different people. Romeo is controlled by his impulses, whether they are to fight or to love or to die. Juliet, on the other hand is more methodical and though she ultimately makes her decisions based on the will of her heart, she at least takes the time to reflect on their consequences.
When the audience first meets Romeo Montague, he is beside himself with love for a woman named Rosalind. His first scene, he is lamenting piteously that the woman he loves does not love him and so he feels unlike himself. "Tut, I have lost myself; I am not here; / This is not Romeo, he's some other where" (I.i.190-191). It is as though without a woman to love, Romeo has no identity. Romeo only agrees to go to the party held by the Capulets in order that he might see his Rosalind again. At this point, Rosalind is the only woman he could ever imagine loving....
To Tybalt, he cries: "I do protest I never injur'd thee, / but love thee better than thou canst devise." His language is insistent, but Mercutio's death is more than he can bear: he takes it personally and is blinded by the abuse he feels that he has suffered. His language changes from insistence to accusation. First, he feels his pains: "This gentleman… / My very friend, hath got
Juliet as a Strong Character In Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, Juliet emerges as a strong woman because he is willing to follow her heart to whatever end to get what she wants. She is not happy doing what her family thinks she should do and has enough strength to know what she wants and do what she must do to get it. We are told that we do not get
Romeo and Juliet Love and Hate in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a play about both love and hate, and can be viewed as both a comedy and a tragedy. The comic structure according to the ancients was social in nature and ended with the restoration of social order. Tragedy was personal -- it was used primarily, as Aristotle said, to effect a kind of catharsis (or cleansing of
" Perhaps because of this reference to contemporary political ideals, the romance of Shakespeare seems more archetypal than the immediately relevant sociological commentary of "West Side Story." Bernstein's musical is unapologetically topical, dealing with the 1950s obsession with juvenile delinquency and even common theories to explain it, as in the song "Gee Officer Krupkie" which suggests alternatively that delinquency is caused by society, psychology, and also a young thug being "no
Critic Bloom continues, "But it could be said also that the audience would understand that Romeo, as a lover-hero, really belongs to another religion, the religion of love, which doesn't collide with Christianity or prevent him from confessing to Friar Laurence, but nonetheless has different standards of what's good and bad" (Bloom 2000, 159). Thus, a strong love like Romeo and Julie profess for each other, is like a
The Definition of Love: Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is often considered to be the greatest love story of all time. The two young lovers fall in love at first sight, sacrifice everything for one another, and are cruelly separated by their warring families. As a result of a series of tragic misunderstandings and the obstacles created by their parents and society, the young lovers are driven to
Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.
Get Started Now