Love

• Romeo and Juliet


  Widely regarded as one of the greatest love stories ever told
• Theme of love


  • Interwoven into every scene in the play
  • Different forms of love explored by Shakespeare
  • Contrasts the purity of first love with the passionate and uncontrollable force of the emotion
  • Uses existing conventions, as well as his own elaborate language and imagery, to present love as: Unrequited, Elevated and holy, Physical, Linked with violence and death
• Unrequited love


  Love that is not returned or reciprocated
• Unrequited love portrayed through

  • Romeo's infatuation with Rosaline
• Romeo uses a range of oxymorons to express his emotions about love
• "O brawling love, O loving hate": 'Romeo'
• Oxymoron


  A figure of speech that combines two contradictory or opposite terms
• The unending list of Romeo's oxymorons suggests his inability to comprehend what is in front of him and his overall confusion on love
• "too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden, too like the lightning": 'Juliet'
• Asyndetic listing


  A list without conjunctions between the items
• Simile


  A figure of speech that compares two things using 'like' or 'as'
• Religious imagery


  Imagery associated with religion, spirituality, and the divine
• The pure and chaste religious imagery when Romeo and Juliet meet is contrasted to Act 5 Scene 3 where the imagery becomes sexualised
• Consummation


  The act of completing a marriage by having sexual intercourse
• The couple are unified in death and the sexual imagery is symbolic of the consummation of their unity in the afterlife
• Viall


  A small round bottle, an allusion to female sexuality in Elizabethan times
• Phallic symbol


  An object that resembles or symbolizes the penis
• Their love was transcendental and able to connect them across three levels: physically, mentally and spiritually
• Physical love


  Love that is expressed through physical intimacy and sexual desire
• "love be rough with you, be rough with love": 'Mercutio'
• Mercutio subverts the convention of romantic poetry when describing Rosaline's body
• "I conjure thee by Rosaline's bright eyes,/By her high forehead and her scarlet lip, /By her fine foot, straight leg, and quivering thigh": 'Mercutio'
• The Friar shows his lack of emotional understanding by saying that "Young men's love lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes"
• Doting


  Showing excessive fondness or affection
• The Nurse checks out Romeo's body and comments that his "leg excels all men's"
• Oxymorons


  Figures of speech that combine two contradictory or opposite terms
• Juliet describes the good parts of Romeo in relation to physical attributes and external beauty, which could be seen as Shakespeare commenting on the superficial nature of all love
• Dichotomy


  A division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different
• "bought the mansion of a love / But not posses'd it": 'Juliet'
• Objectification


  The act of treating a person as an object rather than as a human being
• Business transaction


  A commercial exchange of goods, services, or money
• Love linked with violence and death

  • The passionate love of Romeo and Juliet is unsettled by the violence and conflict that takes place in the play
  • The amalgamation of love and the violence is what characterises the drama as a tragedy
  • Love is also linked with violence and death in many other ways within the play
• "naked weapon": 'Sampson and Gregory'
• Connotations


  The implied or associated meaning of a word or phrase, in addition to its literal or primary meaning
• "thrust [Montague's] maids to the wall": 'Sampson and Gregory'
• Sonnet form


  A poetic form consisting of 14 lines with a specific rhyme scheme
• "civil blood makes civil hands unclean": 'Narrator'
• "violent delights": 'Friar Lawrence'
• "grave is like to be [her] wedding bed": 'Juliet'
• The image of a wedding bed suggests consummation of a marriage and finality which has links to death which is also final