Romeo - M

• "for beauty, starved with her severity/ cuts beauty off from all posterity " - A1 S1

  • he is forlorn and despondent, the emphasis that Romeo places on Rosaline's aesthetics show him to be materialistic and vain - conforms with the patriarchy at the time
  • depthless, ornamental view of women depicts him as childlike and overly romantic in his perception of love
  • "posterity" - women of this era were seen by men as vessels for childrearing
  • he has a dehumanising, objectifying view of women, valuing home purely fro their physical and allure and their maternal capabilities
• Romeo's capacity for such deep love is a contrast to his later revealed capacity for violence (his later killing of Tybalt). It shows humans to be complex multifaceted creatures with sides that seem to contradict each other.
• • Rosaline was a chaste, unattainable woman who has very few defining traits other than being beautiful
  • By contrast Juliet is fiery and defiant and the two women's absolute lack of any common characteristics proves Romeo to value beauty above all other traits, since he professes love for both women to a similar extent
• "give me my sin again" - A1 S5

  • subverts the excitingly seductive connotations of a kiss, turning it into a grim enactment of Romeo's fate
  • The way in which he extends Juliet's metaphor: "let my lips have the sin again", should be romantic, but the romance is unquestionably dampened by the impending sense of doom
• "with love's wings...for stony limits cannot hold love out" A2 S2

  • Willing to literally and metaphorically climb walls, ignore societal and familiar barriers, in order to be with her
  • The metaphor he employs evokes cupid. He is making a classical reference with "love's wings" and making apparent that love is powerful enough that it can overcome physical boundaries.
  • Romeo speaks in verse, in iambic pentameter in fact, and this characterises him to be romantic and decorative in his language showing love to take priority over family rivalries in this scene
• "unfold the imagined happiness that both/ Receive...by this dear encounter" A2 S6

  • aware that marriage is not synonymous with happiness - lacks awareness that marriage is not the only way to express deep love for someone
  • Friar Lawrence encourages the marriage - believes it will end the feud between the Capulets and Montague
  • Their desire to marry likely has a religious basis, but the lovers eloping is controversial and thus they are doomed either way. Friar Lawrence, had he any real empathy for the couple and put his personal motives aside, might have dissuaded them from it
• " I defy you stars" - A5 S1

  • Romeo is still, by act 5, under the impression that fate is trying to keep him and his love apart and addresses the stars - personal pronoun. Not only does this paint his mental state to be disintegrating but it also shows the vast impact the "stars' have had on him, to the point where they feel like a tangible force, to him, that he can address.
  • Elizabethan's - superstitious in regard to the power of celestial bodies
  • paradoxical as the stars by definition are inevitable
• "seal with a righteous kiss/ A dateless bargain to engrossing death" - A5 S3

  • one of his final words to Juliet
  • juxtaposition between the verb "kiss" and the noun between love and violence
  • The union of two seemingly contradictory terms in Romeo and Juliet, seems to portray the concept the humans are complex multifaceted creatures whose contradictory natures often overlap
  • demonstrative of the fundamental issues inherent in love and courtship of the time - often impossible to possess true love without causing violence because of political and social factors