Lael Mattam

Love plays a crucial role in telling the story of Romeo and Juliet, clearly shown in the appropriated Luhrmann film. Using film as a new medium, cinematic techniques explore the love between Romeo and Juliet. The balcony scene is a clear example of how Luhrmann expresses this. To show his love for Juliet, Romeo decides to sneak into the Capulet mansion to confess his love for her. When Romeo sees Juliet through his window, light shines around her and he describes it as, “ the sun.” This suggests that Romeo is calling Juliet the brightness in his life. Luhrmann decided to portray Romeo

Umberto Eco once quoted, “Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.” The use of allusions in Shakespeare's literature helps the reader grasp a deeper, more in depth understanding of what love truly is and what it is capable of. Allusions are key features of literary works including one of Shakespeare's most famous pieces, Romeo and Juliet. In Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, he uses allusions to connect his writing to several related myths and legends including the Greek gods, Phoebus and Phaeton, the goddess Diana, and Cupid. The use of Shakespeare’s allusions helps the reader to glance into the mind of the characters, as well as providing a spotlight on their yearnful personas.

Romeo and Juliet is a play about two star-crossed lovers who have passionate and unconditional love for one another. Due to a family feud, the two lovers cannot be together, resulting in a great tragedy. Throughout the play, William Shakespeare uses figurative language to bring more depth and meaning to his dialogues. Due to the descriptive writing, readers are able to better understand and connect with the characters and the story. In Romeo’s famous love speech for Juliet, 2.2, Shakespeare uses many literary devices to show the audience that Romeo’s love for Juliet is true and everlasting. By using a metaphor, Shakespeare compares Juliet’s beauty to the sun to show the light Juliet brings

With the idea of light representing love already established, Shakespeare uses it reinforce the impossible odds the lovers are facing. Romeo and Juliet constantly talk of and call on astronomical and light emitting objects to change the dark world they live in. Romeo says when he encounters Juliet on her balcony, “Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,” (2.2.5). The courses of all of these celestial objects is set in stone and is celestially difficult to change, and yet Romeo and Juliet nonetheless constantly call on these forces to do the impossible. They do the same with their love, too. The lovers believe that their love and light can indeed destroy the corruption and dark of their society even though they know it is astronomically arduous to accomplish. Romeo and Juliet’s love, they hope, will shine out the dark, letting them live together in a world that accepts them.

Though the Prologue offers the first and perhaps most famous example of celestial imagery in romeo and juliet references to the stars, sun, moon, and heavens run throughout the play, and taken as a whole that imagery seems to express a different view of human responsibility. In Act 1, scene 4, Romeo says that he fears “some consequence yet hanging in the stars” when he and his gang approach the Capulet’s ball. In his next mention of stars, however, Romeo doesn’t refer to their astrological power. Rather, he uses the image of stars to describe Juliet’s otherworldly beauty. Most of the subsequent

2. Shakespeare uses light and dark imagery in this balcony scene to describe Romeo and Juliet's romance and their love. Also, Romeo said "Arise, fair sun, and kill

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.

Fate is something that Romeo and Juliet can not escape in the play no matter how hard they try.When talking about Fate in the story the stars are referenced by the characters to explain coincidences that may happen to them . Shakespeare makes the fate of the star-cross’d lovers story clear from the very beginning by stating in the prologue of Act I “The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love”. (DBQ:Project, 2013) When both characters discover the others death, even if it is at different times they both decide to blame Fate. Romeo references the stars once again because he did not want to believe that a higher power/Fate would take Juliet away from him. Juliet looks to Friar Lawrence to know Romeo is dead and he tells Juliet “A greater power than we can contradict”. (DBQ:Project, 2013) He led Juliet to believe that Fate was also to blame for her husband Romeo’s death. Fate was not one of the characters that caused as much harm as the other two, but was the most blameable character for others in the play.

Finding these references is like a scavenger hunt, and keeps people interested in the work many years after it has been released. The scavenger hunt in The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is the motifs used all across the story, and most notably, the star motif. The stars refer to the characters themselves, in the sky. In the prologue of the work, the stars motif is used, as Romeo and Juliet are referred to as “a pair of star-crossed lovers,” which means that their paths should not even be crossing due to the feud between their families (6). Yet, the pair still finds love, and they eventually marry after one day of knowing each other. The stars are mentioned multiple times throughout the story, and help develop the plot of the story by foreshadowing the ultimate fate of the two lovers. For example, in Act 2, Scene 2, Romeo refers to Juliet’s eyes “two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,” by mentioning heaven, the line provides a nice and sweet metaphor, but is also a sorrow example of foreshadowing Juliet’s ultimate death (15). In Act 1, Scene 4, Romeo and his two friends, Mercutio and Benvolio, are preparing to go to the Capulet’s party. Romeo, however, feels uneasy about the situation, and fears for “some consequence, yet hanging in the stars,/Shall bitterly begin his fearful date” (107-108). Sadly, this line is ultimately true, because the party begins Romeo’s relationship with

In Romeo and Juliet, love is depicted in several ways. Both Luhrman and Shakespeare represent love in different ways in different contexts to both the Elizabethan era and the contemporary audience. Both the original and later manifestations of the text are valued because they both communicate to the audience on the values of love and society by employing a variety of devices.

Throughout “Romeo And Juliet”, Romeo uses comparisons and such to express his love for Juliet. Shakespeare uses figurative language like this to describe Romeo and Juliet’s relationship. For example, Romeo often uses biblical references to describe his love for Juliet. When Juliet is at her balcony “o’er [Romeo’s] head,/ as is a winged messenger of heaven” (Shakespeare line 28-29) Romeo indirectly calls her an angel. Through Romeo’s reference to Juliet being an angel, Shakespeare is able to demonstrate Romeo’s perspective of Juliet’s perfection. Romeo also compares nature's beauty to Juliet. He describes her by saying she “is the sun” (Shakespeare line 2). Through this direct comparison Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet, a tragic love story between two-star crossed lovers, portrays themes that tend to revolve around young love. As the play introduces it’s two main characters, you soon see the challenge that the young lovers would have to face which lead them to the fate of death. The use of imagery and metaphoric language allows us to visualize the theme that is being set throughout the play. Shakespeare gave us several opportunities with his delicate word choice to understand the themes such as “love” and “duality of light and dark”. To help convey these themes to the given audience, Shakespeare carefully words the dialogue of each character to give us different views on each scene.

Shakespeare uses images of religion and light in “ Romeo and Juliet” Act 1 Scene 5 to show that the intense blind love Romeo and Juliet feel for each other is more of an idealization of another as something pure and holy. Before meeting Juliet, Romeo claims to be in love a girl named Rosaline who he describes with dark abstract language such as love in the form of "smoke," "fire," "sea," and "madness" (1.1.197-201)—suggesting that the love Romeo felt for Rosaline was superficial love rather than intellectual love. Romeo is than taken out of this dark immature love when he first sees Juliet and describes her beauty as a heavenly beacon of light “doth teach the torches to burn bright” and something too angelic and pure, “for the Earth too

The comparison of Juliet’s beauty to the sun, and its ability to kill the moon, reveals Romeo’s appearance-based affection and gives the audience a glimpse of Romeo’s obsessive, and excitable

Love and death is an ample theme in the play 'Romeo and Juliet', there are a few scenes in which this theme is exceedingly apparent. This has been presented by Shakespeare's with the use of soliloquy, rhyming pentameter, illusions, irony, juxtaposition and foreshadowing to convey 'love and death'. Although this notion of love and death seems blatant throughout the text it is more complex than other themes and requires further investigation.