romeo

• Romeo Montague


  Eponymous character of the play, initially portrayed as an archetypal Petrarchan lover
• Romeo


  • Self-conscious sufferer, driven by his unrequited love for Rosaline
  • Isolates himself from family, relatives and friends
• Romeo's meeting with Juliet Capulet


  Ignites a major shift in the trajectory of the play as well as Romeo's narrative
• Star-crossed lovers


  Romeo and Juliet, as their love is challenged by arbitrary fate
• Romeo's development


  • An important cursor for the transition from comedy to tragedy
  • His hamartia (fatal flaw) is the inability to think rationally, choosing instead to make quick impulsive decisions
• Romeo was based on a folktale, which was translated into English for the first time in 1562 by Arthur Brooke
• Petrarchan love


  Shakespeare is conversing with Petrarchan definitions of love, where men are presented as tormented lovers
• Homosociality


  • Romeo's bond with Mercutio and Benvolio echoes the homosociality typical of Elizabethan England, where men were often educated together and occupied the public domain
• Elizabethan society


  Romeo is presented as a dissident of the society that Shakespeare inhabited, as he is unable to assimilate to the rules and customs of this society
• Shakespeare is engaging with the idiosyncrasies of his time, with the portrayal of Romeo
• Romeo


  • Loving: Encourages the audience to explore different types of love and question the effect love can have on a person
  • Fateful: Ultimately unable to defy the powers of fortune and fate, but signifies a level of self-autonomy and an assertion of the individual self
  • Religious: His dialogue is imbued with religious allusions
  • Isolated: Indicates isolation in various scenes, which refer to Petrarchan suffering
  • Masculine: Navigates the realm of masculinity, contrasted with hyper-masculine characters
  • Violent: Violence is hindered by love, but he reverts to typical masculine behaviour after Juliet's purported death
• Romeo and Juliet


  Their relationship develops quickly and is incredibly passionate, but they are ultimately unable to defy the powers of fortune and fate
• Romeo and Rosaline


  Rosaline serves to show the audience the difference between lust and love, as Romeo acts as a Petrarchan lover towards her
• Romeo and Lord Montague


  Lord Montague has a lot of love and respect for his son, and resolves the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets at the end of the play
• Romeo and Lady Montague


  Also has a lot of love and affection for her son, and dies from grief upon finding out about his death
• Romeo and Mercutio


  Mercutio is a foil for Romeo, as he is a cynical man focused on the physical parts of love, but they deeply care for each other
• Romeo and Tybalt


  Tybalt is Romeo's main rival, and their fight results in Romeo killing Tybalt in revenge for Mercutio's death
• Romeo and the Friar


  The Friar acts as a father figure for Romeo
• Montague: 'Shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out,/And makes himself an artificial night:'
• Romeo: 'Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,/ O any thing of nothing first create!'
• Romeo: 'O, she is rich in beauty, only poor/ That when she dies, with beauty dies her store'
• Romeo: 'Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars./One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun/ Ne'er saw her match since first the world begun.'
• Irregular rhyming couplets


  Indicates the unpredictable nature of love
• Petrarchan lover


  Suffers from unrequited love
• Poetry personified


  Made more visible, as Romeo is shown writing his dialogue
• Romeo: '"O, she is rich in beauty, only poor/ That when she dies, with beauty dies her store".'
• Caesura


  Interjects the line, much like how death interrupts her "beauty"
• Repetition of "dies"


  Emphasises the indomitable transience of her "beauty" and "store"
• Adjectives concerning wealth "rich" and "poor"


  Implies that women are commodities measured by their beauty and fertility
• Romeo: '"Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars./One fairer than my love! The all-seeing sun/ Ne'er saw her match since first the world began".'
• "Heretics"


  Individuals with unorthodox religious beliefs, who were often burned to death in the Elizabethan era
• Romeo's infatuation


  Analogous to faith and religion: Rosaline is portrayed as the perfect being, like God, and Romeo as a devout follower
• "Sun" and "light"


  Lexically cohesive motif associated with beauty and love
• Romeo: '"Some consequence yet hanging in the stars…But He hath the steerage of my course."'
• "...the stars"


  Indicate the heavens, and the idea that life on earth is dictated by that macrocosm
• Shakespeare allegorically represents Romeo


  As a ship and God as the captain- "...He hath steerage of [Romeo's] course", signifying lack of self-autonomy and the character's passivity to higher power
• Regular rhyming couplets


  Add energy to the dialogue, reinforcing the excitement and intense emotions of Romeo
• Couplets


  Heighten the feeling of love - they are two lines fit together as a singular unit/ anatomy
• Juliet


  Metaphorically portrayed as transcendental
• Lexically cohesive conflict between light and dark


  Alludes to the "artificial night" in scene 1, which emphasises the weight of Juliet's presence in the character's narrative arc