Throughout William Shakespeare's play, Romeo and Juliet, the characters represent opposing views on love. Shakespeare did this in order to allow each person in the play to have someone they could relate to and show that not everybody feels love the same way.
In the play, Benvolio's view on love is the most down to earth and realistic. He understands that love could be more than physical like Mercutio believes, but he also understands that love is tough and you must have a rational way of going about it, unlike Romeo does. Shakespeare created Benvolio this way in order to show that there are different ways to feel love, and some are healthier than others. “Alas that love, so gentle in his view, should be so tyrannous and rough in proof” (Act
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He sees it as nothing deeper than the skin and he takes it as a joke. Shakespeare gave Mercutio these character traits in order to represent how most men in the Elizabethan Era saw love. The men seeing the play could relate to Mercutio in his actions and understand that there are other ways of going about things. “You are a lover. Borrow cupid's wings | And soar with them above a common bound” (Act 1 Scene 4 Lines 17 and 18). Here, Mercutio is being sarcastic with Romeo. Romeo feels that he is too heartbroken over Rosaline to go to the party, and Mercutio is mocking him for it. He does not see love as anything greater than physical need. “Throughout lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love” (Act 1 Scene 4 Line 76). Mercutio believes that love is brought on by a fairy called Queen Mab that goes into people's heads as they sleep. Mercutio does not believe in emotional love, simply a physical feeling. Mercutio’s view on love had no attachment, similarly to how men in Shakespeare's time period …show more content…
He sees love as much more than simply physical, like Mercutio does, but unlike Benvolio, he does not understand how to handle the heartbreak that comes with love. “Th’ exchange of thy love's faithful vow for mine” (Act 2 Scene 2 Line 134). Right after meeting Juliet, Romeo sneaks to her house and asks her to marry him. This was simply out of impulse, as just before the party, he was still heartbroken over the fact that Rosaline wanted to become a nun. But as soon as he saw Juliet, he “fell in love”. “Here's to my love… with a kiss I die” (Act 5 Scene 3 Lines 119 and 120). Here, Romeo kills himself because he thought that JUliet was dead. He believed that he was so in love with her that he could not live without her. Romeos irrational behavior ultimately lead to his demise. Although Romeo is a male character, he was very sensitive and had many feminine traits. Shakespeare created Romeo this way to show that it was okay for men to feel attached in love, and so that anybody in the audience that felt similarly to him would be able to
He is quick to act before he thinks in Act III, Scene I when he announces “I will not budge for no man’s pleasure, I,” (Shakespeare 426). Unlike Benvolio, Mercutio does not back down when Tybalt challenges him to fight. Mercutio has a sense of humor and often makes fun of Romeo when he is in love and heartbroken. He shows his comedic side when he jokes about Romeo being a mad lover, and teases him about not being over Rosaline (Shakespeare
In the beginning he is heartbroken when the love of his life turns out to not love him the way he does her. He is consoled by his good friends Benvolio and Mercutio who later think he is being dramatic over the whole thing. As the play goes on Romeo and Juliet fall more and more in “love”, it becomes clear that the only reason Romeo loves Juliet is because Juliet loves him back unlike Rosaline. “Her I love now Doth grace for grace and love for love allow. The other did not so( Romeo Act 4 scene 1).”
In this particular scene of Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio and Benvolio are searching for Romeo and are trying to get him to come back to them. Benvolio asks Mercutio to call for Romeo. Mercutio, to call him, pretends to conjure him as if he were summoning a spirit. Through this, we see a sarcastic, mocking tone towards Romeo from Mercutio. The topic in this scene is of love and Mercutio does indeed scorn at love. Benvolio initially interprets Mercutio's talk as provoking Romeo and thinks that “if he hear thee, thou wilt anger him”(2.1.25) Things are intended, by Mercutio, to lure Romeo back to them with fantasies of Rosaline such as images of “her fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh”(2.1.22). This speech is a little breaker between the
William Shakespeare is one of the most famous playwrights of his time well-known for the blending of tragedy and comedy provided in his plays. The combination of those two genres is getting evident in Romeo and Juliet and mostly personified by two distinct characters. Mercutio,a close friend of Romeo and the Nurse,the personal servant and guardian of Juliet function as the contradictory paraller of the tragic romantic couple in terms of innocent,pure and vulnerable love. Starting with Mercutio he is depicted to be the exact opposite of Romeo when it comes to the love approach. His anti-romantic,agressive and witty disposition of love that dominates his character comes to contradict to Romeo's fresh,romantic and pure aura of love.
At the time Mercutio makes his famous "Queen Mab" speech in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, he and Romeo, together with a group of their friends and kinsmen, are on the way to a party given by their family's arch-enemy, Lord Capulet. Their plan is to crash the party so that Romeo may have the opportunity to see his current love, Rosaline, whom they know has been invited to the Capulet's masque that evening.
The Bravest of All During the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King, Jr. cautioned, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” Just like Martin Luther King Jr. tried to drive out segregation with compassion in the U.S., the love between Romeo and Juliet was a way to drive out the hatred between the two families. In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, love inspired courage and change by making the two families see what they did wrong clearly.
Although one of the main themes of the play was love, Mercutio’s opinion on it is contradicting. Anyone who has ever heard of Romeo and Juliet knows that the story involves young lovers that fall in love so deeply they die for it, Mercutio, however, has a different outlook on love than love sick Romeo. Mercutio mocks Romeo’s idea of love in the story with the Queen Mab speech and describes love as a physical pursuit. His opinions contrasts with Romeo’s, making Mercutio a foil and helps us better comprehend Romeo’s character. Mercutio goes on to talk about dreams in his speech saying they are just a man’s desires and often leads to false hope for dreamers. This makes Romeo’s dream of his love for Rosaline doubtful, therefore
Shakespeare does this by noting how Romeo and Juliet do not actually love each other. This is represented by Romeo and Juliets actions and rash decision making. Their decisions are very impulsive and rushed. As a result, it impacted them negatively in the future and as well as their relationship. Romeo and Juliet’s love for each other is not actually how love really is. They’ve mistakenly confused lust for love.
As a friend of Romeo’s, Mercutio supports the Montague’s in the ancient feud. An example of Mercutio defending the Montague’s is when Tybalt, a member of the loathed Capulet family, abuses Romeo and Mercutio intervenes on Romeo’s behalf. Attempting to restore peace, Romeo gets between the two combatants and Mercutio “hath got his mortal hurt” (Page 149; Act 3, Scene 1) on Romeo’s account. In spite of his “life shall pay the forfeit of peace” (page 17; Act 1, Scene 1), Romeo seeks revenge on Tybalt as he loves his murdered friend. As Romeo kills Tybalt out of love for Mercutio, Shakespeare suggests that love conquered the thought of being penalized with death.
Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is incredibly good at portraying the problematic ‘young love’ that the two main characters (Romeo and Juliet) have throughout the play. Shakespeare is very good at trying to convey the smaller details of love, using techniques such as imagery using dark and light to show contrast; as well as power. In the play, Romeo and Juliet are from two different families that are “both alike in dignity”. They are both descendants of rich and powerful men (men were seen as more important when the play was written) and both families have a “feud”, a problem with each other.
In the very last scene of the play, Romeo goes back to Verona to go lay with his “dead” wife – who is actually under the influence of a death-like drug – after hearing from his servant about her death. He travels with his trustworthy servant all the way to the tomb, but when they reach the tomb, Romeo asks for his servant to leave. Romeo, in his obsession-driven self, threatens to tear his servant limb from limb and scatter his remains across the graveyard if he doesn’t leave Romeo. This shows that Romeo is losing himself. He isn’t just a man who likes the idea of love, he’s a man who drives himself insane with the idea of love. Even though his love for Juliet can be summed down to beauty, his mind amplifies his feelings for her. Towards the end of Act 5, Scene 3, Romeo drinks poison to “join” Juliet in her death. Romeo even goes as far as to call the poison a cordial because he believes that it will heal him – heal his pain of not being with Juliet. This shows that, Romeo’s obsessive nature made his irrational decision seem rational. A relationship to heal him from his pain of Rosaline turned into a relationship that ended with death. His mind created his feelings towards Juliet, yet he continued to let himself be deceived. His made-up passion-driven obsession with Juliet ultimately led to his
In 'Romeo and Juliet', Shakespeare portrays different aspects and types of love in many ways. The obvious love is the fateful love between Romeo and Juliet although the play also displays platonic love, maternal love and aspects of adolescent love.
The tragic play Romeo & Juliet is famous for love—the love that Romeo and Juliet have for each other. But Shakespeare created something deeper and more complex than a play about compulsive teenagers; he created a play about the complex web of choices, loyalties, and loves that two teens have to face in the petite city of Verona. Both Romeo and Juliet have a difficult time making choices, but the choices that face Juliet are of greater consequence and require more immediate action than the choices that face Romeo.
In the play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Romeo entertains us as one of the most interesting characters in addition to one of the main ones. At the beginning of the book, Romeo claims to be miserably in love with Rosaline. Within the next 12 hours, he has completely forgotten about Rosaline and decides that he is in love with Juliet Capulet instead. After saying to his friends that he will never love anyone else, he certainly changes his mind quickly. Romeo proves himself a romantic, emotional character, who makes decisions based completely on present feelings and preferences. This likely will be a cause of his suicide in the end of the book.
Love is one of the only things that nearly every human being is capable of feeling. Like many aspects of human lives, views on love differ from every individual. Nowhere is this more present than in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo, a member of the Montague family, and Juliet, a member of the rivaling Capulet family, find themselves in the circumstances of falling madly in love with each other. Throughout the play and through the different relationships encountered, Shakespeare’s attitude toward love differs between how Romeo is portrayed to love Juliet, how Juliet is displayed to love Romeo, and how Juliet’s nurse is shown to view love on its own.