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Causes
- "She'll not be hit / With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit...Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold." (Romeo Act 1.1)
- "If love be rough with you, be rough with love. / ***** love for pricking, and you beat love down." (Mercutio Act1.4)
- "ROMEO: If I profane with my unworthiest hand... JULIET: You kiss by th' book." (Act 1.5)
- LORD CAPULET: "Hang thee young baggage, disobedient wretch!...Speak no; reply not; do not answer me."
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Effects
- Allusion to Roman goddess Diana, goddess of virginity and hunting. Romeo sounds like a typical Petrarchan lover. Rosaline is physically and emotionally impenetrable. Contrast to masquerade scene when Romeo first meets Juliet: "O she doth teach the torches to burn bright." (Romeo Act1.5) Shakespeare was deeply influenced by Classical Literature and his own sonnets were largely inspired by Petrarch's sonnets. Shakespeare wished to convey the different types of love a person can experience and how lust and love are closely related. Romeo's lust for Rosaline was important for the audience to see so that they could compare and contrast the different forms of love and also allows us to question his love for Juliet and its legitimacy. Are his actions ruled by love or lust? Do the allusions to Roman mythology in this play allude more to hormonal acceleration than true feelings of love?
- Mercutio offers a more crude view of love to our main protagonists. Mercutio establishes himself as Romeo's friend by encouraging him to castoff his melancholy. The characterisation of Mercutio tells us that he believes in action being taken and helps us to understand how he is actually to blame for his own death. The character of Mercutio offered entertainment for the audience. He epitomized Shakespearean masculinity and bawdiness and would have provided entertainment for the lower classes. One could argue it was Mercutio's rashness for action that led to his brawl with Tybalt. Does hatred conquer love? Mercutio sees Romeo's passion for love as his weakness and though his eyes we are privy to Romeo's hamartia.
- Sonnet form used to portray true love and love at first sight between the protagonists. Their love has the potential to be anything but conventional. Religious imagery used to imply the purity of their love. Juliet is smitten with Romeo, but also recognises that Romeo is unoriginal. Contrast this scene with the prologue. It too is a sonnet but whereas this sonnet contains a lexical field of religion, the prologue contains a lexical field of violence. This scene can also be explored through love vs. lust. Our protagonists have fallen in love at first sight. Romeo loves Juliet based solely on her beauty before even meeting her. The same can be said for Juliet. This scene also shows us the intense passion that can be felt between two people, the forcefulness of love. Love is too powerful to be easily contained or understood. These sonnets portray the chaos and passion of being in love, combining images of love, violence, death, religion and family in an impressionistic rush leading to the play's tragic conclusion.
- Characterisation of Lord Capulet. Where has the caring father gone to that we encountered earlier on in the play who so tenderly told Paris that he wanted his daughter to marry for love when she's ready? Instead he uses imperatives to command his daughter to obey him and refers to his child as 'baggage' and 'wretch.' His tone and words have transformed from being caring to cruel towards his daughter. Although alternatively, one could argue that in the views of Elizabethan society, he is still in fact acting as a good father and it is Juliet who is out of line. The patriarchal power structure inherent in the Renaissance families, wherein the father controls the action of all the other family members, particularly women, places Juliet in an extremely vulnerable position. Her heart, in her family's mind, is not hers to give. The law and the emphasis on social civility demands terms of conduct with which the blind passion of love cannot comply. Juliet's name deserves to go first in this play. Her society does not consider her opinion worthwhile. Her family turns on her, yet she faces her fears and moves forward, defying social customs. Shakespeare has sparked the embers of feminism in his play and created a truly remarkable female character, unusual for the time of his writing, but echoing the strong female characters of classical literature, of which you can easily see his influence.
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