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HOW SHAKESPEARE PRESENTS ROMEO’S FEELINGS IN ACT 1 SCENE 1 AND ACT 2 SCENE 2

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HOW SHAKESPEARE PRESENTS ROMEO’S FEELINGS IN ACT 1 SCENE 1 AND ACT 2 SCENE 2

Love is an important theme in most of Shakespeare’s play, including in Romeo and Juliet because love is a stronger force than all the animosity and forces of fate in Romeo and Juliet. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare’s play, Shakespeare explores Romeo’s change in attitude to love between Rosaline and Juliet. In Act 1 Scene 1 Shakespeare introduces us to Romeo’s passionate desire towards Rosaline through the use of oxymoron, monologues and vivid imagery. In contrast, in Act 2 Scene 2, when Romeo is addressing Juliet, his language shifts through the use of light, religious and mythical imagery to reflect his newly found romantic love to Juliet.

In Act 1 scene …show more content…

This notion is furthered through the use of binary opposition throughout Romeo’s oxymoron ‘O brawling love, O loving hate’. This monologue of strong contrasting images of love and hate in one sentence suggests that Romeo finds the intensity of his emotion towards Rosaline destabilising and his emotion is not calm and peaceful. Indeed, the deployment of oxymoron throughout Romeo’s speech such as ‘heavy lightness’ or ‘cold fire, sick health’ suggests that the character so overwhelmed by his feelings that he loses the sight of his common sense and spins and turns into mad love towards Rosaline.

In Act 2, Scene, 2 Romeo’s attitude to love shifts from an infatuated love towards Rosaline to more true and youthful love he feels for Juliet. When Romeo sets his eyes on Juliet for the first time, he uses light imagery to express his feelings ‘Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon’. For Romeo, Juliet is the sun who has brought brightness into his life like the sun that brought brightness to people’s lives. This beautifully romantic imagery highlights the purity of Romeo’s feelings and underscores to the reader the powerful force of love that Romeo is now entangled in.

Moreover, Shakespeare uses religious imagery to strengthen Romeo’s feelings. He refers Juliet as a ‘bright angel’, who is ‘a winged messenger of heaven’ .This religious imagery highlights the perfection of Romeo’s love to Juliet

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