1. Romeo and Juliet
{ Shakespeare

2.  Themes include:
 Love
 Civil Disorder
Themes

3.  Love has a the effect of transformation in the play. It changes both
the characters, Romeo and Juliet as it results in the ‘mis-shapen
chaos of well-seeming forms’ (Act 1: Scene1). In addition, love
establishing the end to an ‘ancient grudge’ as the ‘star –crossed
lover’s’ ‘misadventure piteous ovethrows / Doth with their death
bury their parents’ strife’ (Prologue).
Love

4.  The theme of love is developed through
contrasts.
 In the first few scenes of the play we are
presented with three different kinds of love.
 Each of these understandings of love form the
basis from which we can view the ‘true love’
between Romeo and Juliet.
Contrasts in Character

5. The play opens with the crude remarks between Sampson and Gregory as they
discuss what they would do to the Montague’s maids.
Sampson: ‘<. Women being the weaker vessels are ever thrust to the wall’ (Act 1)
Sampson: ‘< When I have fought with the men, I will be cruel with the maids – I
will cut off their heads’ (Act 1: Scene 2)
This is continued later in the play by the nurse as she jests to Juliet and Lady
Capulet that after Juliet had fallen forwards as a child the nurse and her husband
had laughed that ‘’Thou wilt fall backward when thou comest to age’. She jests that
‘women grow by men’ and she urges Juliet to go seek ‘happy nights to happy days’
(Act 1: Scene 3).
Mercutio also mocks Romeo’s romatic gushing:
Mercution : ‘Cry, but ay me, pronounce but ‘love’ and ‘dove’ to mock rhymed
expressions of love and ‘Oh that she were / An open arse and though a poperin
pear.’ (Act 2:Scene 1).
Physical / Sensual Love

6.  Shakespeare also presents infatuation through the mockery of the
patrarchan lover.
 A patrarchan lover suffers from unrequited love. The lover idolises
and longs for the woman in his sights.
 In its language:
 A patrarchan sonnet will emphasis the woman’s physical beauty and
physical characteristics using similes and metaphors.
 uses conceit—exaggerated metaphors
 uses elaborate, flowery, exaggerated, embellished, artificial language
Infatuation

7. Romeo is, at the beginning, a rather tiresome character. He is melancholy
with love.
He speaks in the elaborate language of love, fashionable at the time of the
plays production.
He regards Rosaline as beyond all women in beauty:
‘The all-seeing sun / Ne’er saw her match since the world begun’
The hyperboles present in his language suggests that this love is not
genuine.
Romeo as a Patrarchan lover

8.  Romeo is very much in love with the idea of being in love.
Why the, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! (1.1.176-81).
 The use of oxymoron presents love as a nightmare state. Yet also reveals
that love is inexplicitly tided to hate.
‘O me, what fray was here? Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all. Here’s much
to do with hate, but more with love.’ p.29
 These lines from Romeo seem to foreshadow later events in the play as the
families feud will result in the destruction of the two young lovers. The
comment seems to suggest that they cannot be separated; to hate is to feel
pain ‘brawling love’ and so often people relish in hate ‘loving hate’.
Patrarchan Lover

9. To marry for practical reasons for wealth, social security and family alliances.
 This is seen through the arranged marriage of Juliet and Paris.
 In Act 1 Scene 2 Paris respectfully asks Capulet for his daughters hand in marriage: ‘But
now my lord, what say you to my suit?’
 Lady Capulet compares Paris to ‘a fish in the sea’ (Act 1 Scene 3) and later as a ‘noble gentle
man’
 Capulet: my care hath been to have her matched; and having now provided a gentleman of
noble parentage, of fair demesnes, youthful and nobly liened. Stuffed as they say with
honourable parts, proportioned as one’s thought would wish a man- and then to have a
wretched puling fool (<) To answer ‘I’ll not wed, I cannot love’. (Act 3 Scene 5).
 Capulet’s tyrannical outpouring asserts his right and ‘care’ to marry his daughter off to a
good man. His wife Lady Capulet stands by him and even the Nurse, who up until this
point had been Juliet’s confidante and her aid in her marriage to Romeo urges Juliet to give
up on the disgraced Romeo whom she describes as ‘a dishclout to him (Paris); an eagle’ (Act
3: Scene 5).
 Demesnes = estates
 Liened = descended
 Puling = weeoing
Conventional Love
(Of the time)

10. Against a background of superficial and forged love, Romeo and Juliet’s
love stands out as superior.
 Their love is constructed as genuine through the moral character of the
Friar who does not allow them to stay alone ‘till holy church
incorporate two in one’ (Act 2: Scene 6).
 This superior love is asserted through the use of religious imagery in
the famous balcony scene, in which Romeo admires his new found
love. He describes Juliet’s eyes using the metaphor, ‘Two of the fairest
stars in all of heaven’. He urges his ‘bright angel’ to speak. He declares
‘Call me but ‘love’ and I’ll be new baptized’ (Act 2: Scene 2)
True Love
Made Genuine Through Religion

11. Juliet is a mature lover and rejects Romeo’s elaborate language as a means
of wooing her.
Romeo: Lady, by yonder blessed moon I swear,
That tips with silver all these fruit – tree tops –
Juliet: O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,/ That monthly
changes in her circled orb,
Lest, that thy love prove likewise variable.
Romeo: What shall I swear by?
Juliet: Do not swear at all< (Act 2: Scene 2).
For Juliet, love should not be based on extravagant promise and these
ideas a fickle and changeable ‘like the moon’ which moves in cycles.
Instead his actions should reveal his true love.
Juliet

12.  Romeo has noticeably matured in Act 2: Scene 2. He has moved
away from the melodramatic and melancholy expressions of love.
His declarations of love are now in blank verse, which adds
realism and a more natural quality to their love. His expression of
his love for Juliet, although still full of imagery, are not the
crafted rhymes of his previous declarations. These expressions
are therefore not limited by the need to construct a cleaver
rhyming scheme, but instead seen as more genuine, unedited
expressions.
 The genuine nature of their love is also borne out by their actions.
Structure and Plot

13.  During Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting, their
conversation takes the form of a shared sonnet. (A
popular poetic expression of love at the time of the
play’s creation).
 The shared nature of the rhyme brings the couple
together and their lives, like their language, is
intertwined.
 Just as a sonnet comes to a climax in the final lines,
so does the couples meeting and they are bound
with a kiss.
Language
The Sonnet

14. Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in the balcony scene (Act 2: Scene 2) to
describe the blossoming of Romeo and Juliet's romance.
Light represents the lovers as they see one another in the darkness of their troubles;
darkness also as the shroud of secrecy; also light as lightning and therefore
transitory and easily burnt out.
Romeo: But soft, what light through yonder window
breaks?/ It is the east and Juliet is the sun!
(Act 2, scene 2)
Romeo: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright./ It seems she hangs upon the
cheek of night/ As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear—
(Act 1, scene 5)
Motif
Light and Dark

15.  The two major themes of love and conflict are intertwined through
the plot.
 This is especially true of Act 1 Scene 5, in which the lovers first meet.
The contrast between love and hate is striking in this scene. Tybalt
believes Romeo has come to ‘scorn’. His bitter mutterings are in
complete contrast to Romeo’s admiration for Juliet. To him she is ‘like
a jewel’ and a ‘snowy dove among crows’. His imagery here reflecting
her preciousness, purity, peace and innocence.
 The plot involves, as the prologue suggests from the plays onset, a
feud between two opposed families, a pair of lovers who are brought
to death as a result of the feud, and the end of the feud as a result of
the deaths of the lovers.
Plot

16.  Beginning is comic. It is full of love and conflict.
 Turning Point occurs in Act 3 with the death of Mercutio and
events become much more tragic.
His death leads to:
 Romeo killing Tybalt,
 Romeo’s banishment,
 The separation of the lovers,
 Juliet’s sadness causes Capulet to arrange her marriage,
 Leads to the poison potion plan,
 Which results in the lover’s deaths.
Key Events

17.  There are three views of love in the play. Describe Romeo’s love for
Rosaline. How do we know that Romeo’s love for Juliet is genuine?
The nurse’s view of love is quite different to that of Lady Capulet’s;
compare and contrast the two. Discuss Lady Capulet’s opinion of Paris
in this context.
 Consider the motifs in the play. What are the various ways that
Shakespeare uses to enhance Romeo’s discovery of Juliet at the end?
What are some of Romeo’s images for Juliet in both Act 1 and in the
balcony scene? Discuss the light and dark images throughout the play?
 The characters of Romeo and Juliet develop as the play progresses.
Describe Romeo’s character at the beginning of the play? How does he
mature as the play continues? What kind of daughter was Juliet at the
beginning of the play? How has she changed by the end? How does
she react to Romeo’s charms?
Areas to Revise