Love

• "O brawling love, O loving hate" (Act 1)
• Oxymoron:

  • The oxymoric nature of the phrases simultaneously juxtaposes and conflates love and hatred, suggesting an intense inner conflict in Romeo over his unrequited love for Rosaline.
  • Shakespeare subverts the traditional portrayal of love, revealing its potential to be belligerent and psychologically ruinous. This challenges the typical role of a romantic hero, foreshadowing Romeo's descent into tragedy due to his hamartia of emotional excess.
  • Romeo's contradictory language in the face of his unrequited love for Rosaline is emblematic of callow infatuation and emotional instability present among the younger characters, particularly in Romeo and Juliet, illustrating Shakespeare's warning against the dangers of youth rashness.
• Anaphora:

  • Romeo's repeated interjection "O", conveys a sense of emotional excess, establishing Romeo's emotionally charged state and is almost theatrical obsession with suffering. This stylised repetition evokes his impetuous sentimentality, indulging in the melodrama of unrequited desire.
  • This foregrounds Romeo's performative persona, he is an actor in his own romantic tragedy. His overwhelming expression could suggest a narcissistic indulgence in emotional suffering. Shakespeare positions Romeo as a figure whos calalow heart leads him to conflate intensity with truth and passion with purpose, setting the stage for his ultimate demise.
• Key context it relates to:

  • Petrarchan Lover: A man who is hopelessly and unrequitedly in love with a woman. In Romeo's lament "Brawling love," Shakespeare presents him as a callow petrarchan figure who wallows in unrequited love. "loving hate," embodies the tumultuous emotional extremes celebrated in petrarchan sonnets. Romeo's infatuation is more about suffering than connection.
  • Italy: Shakespeare sets his play in Verona. According to English stereotyping, Italy was believed to be romantic, wild country in which women were promiscuous and men were belligerent and prone to duelling. By setting the play in italy, seen by elizabethans as a sate of romance, caos, and belligerence, amplifies Romeo's tumultuous experience with love. Romeo's intense romanticism "loving hate", is not just an emotional paradox but a product of the equillibriu between love and violence in italian culture.
• WOW knowledge:

  Freud's theory of Thanatos:

  • The unconscious drive towards death, illuminates the characters' self-destructive tendencies.