themes!

• Love

  The play's dominant and most important theme, specifically the intensity and passion that can occur because of love at first sight
• Love in the play is presented as romantic love, but may also be lust or infatuation rather than deep and lasting love
• Romeo's language when first seeing Juliet

  • Hyperbolic verse in rhyming couplets, dripping with alliteration
  • Oh she doth teach the torches to burn bright
  • It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night as a rich jewel in an ethiopia beauty too rich for use for earth to deer
• Juliet's language when first meeting Romeo

  • Use of antonyms and rhyming couplets
  • My only love sprung from my only hate
  • Too early seen unknown and known too late
  • Prodigious birth of love it is to me that i must love a loathed enemy
• The heightened poetic, melodramatic language of the lovers provides a powerful introduction to love at first sight, which the audience knows will end tragically
• Juliet's young age is an issue, and Romeo is on the rebound from a similar infatuation with Rosalind
• The pressures on Juliet to marry Paris because she is of a "pretty age" forces the young lovers into an ill-conceived marriage too soon for them to really know each other
• Love in the play

  Overwhelming, incapacitating the ability to behave logically or calmly, blinding them to all other values, loyalties and emotions
• Juliet's dramatic and extreme behavior


  • Defying her family, denying her father and refusing her name
• Romeo's behavior


  • Dropping his friends Mercutio and Benvolio after the feast to go to Juliet's garden
• Shakespeare's presentation of love

  Not a sentimental love, but a realistic, dangerous, passionate, obsessive and brutal love that is like a car hurtling full speed towards an inevitable tragic crash
• Religious imagery in the play


  • Makes the love feel almost spiritual at times
  • Described as a kind of magic, a light bewitched by the charm of looks
  • Generally feels chaotic, powerful, exciting and mysterious
• Juliet perfectly describes her love for Romeo by refusing to describe it, saying "my true love is grown to such success I cannot sum up some of half my wealth"
• The love experienced in the play drives everything towards a violent and tragic end, partly because of the existence of hate that runs parallel to the love story, and partly because of the blindness caused by such explosive love
• Sex

  The themes of love and sex are closely linked, with Romeo's romanticism about both Juliet and Rosalind counterbalanced by his awareness of the sexual element of their relationship
• Mercutio's crude language and sexual innuendo


  • Lolling up and down, hide his bauble in a hole
• Juliet's attitude towards love and sex

  More traditional, in line with Catholic doctrine, with love standing above sex and the view that marriage must be legally consummated through sexual intercourse
• Juliet's metaphor about love and sex


  • Oh I have bought the mansion of a love but not possessed it
  • And though I am sold not yet enjoyed
• Shakespeare presents Juliet's mature ideas about sex, which is difficult to believe given her young age, likely due to the need to hide sexuality using metaphor and puns to avoid censorship
• Violence


  A very important theme, with Verona being a violent place with armed men walking around in gangs fueled by the ancient grudge between the Capulets and the Montagues
• Violent language and imagery

  • Gregory saying "draw thy tall" and Samson responding "my naked weapon is out"
  • Tybalt keen to fight Romeo
  • Tybalt killing Mercutio, and Romeo killing Tybalt
• The link between sex and violence starts with the innuendo but continues with Samson declaring his desire to "push Montague's men from the war and thrust his maids to the wall"
• Individual vs Society


  Much of the play involves the lovers' struggle against public and social institutions that oppose their love, such as the patriarchal society, law and order, religion, and pressures on honor and reputation
• The young lovers are surrounded by pressures that make their relationship impossible to succeed, including the church, the fathers, and the obsession with defending honor
• Fate

  The idea that Romeo and Juliet are "star-crossed", fated not to be together because of the movements of the stars, fits the tragic genre of the play
• The characters are aware that they are defying their fate, with Romeo declaring "then I defy you, stars" before his suicide
• The plans by Friar Lawrence seem doomed to failure, with a series of accidents and impeccably bad timing, as if the fate was against the lovers all along
• The dramatic irony of revealing the ending at the beginning creates anticipation and tension that has captivated audiences for centuries