Until Death Do Us Part

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Until Death Do Us Part…In a Few Days

Prior to the 19th century, love and marriage were often considered to be separate concepts. Marriage was strictly business management whereas love was a pursuit outside of marriage. During the renaissance, “ideal” love was a purifying and noble experience. There were two outcomes necessary for the love to be deemed ideal: there could only be a union of the hearts, minds and soul, not the bodies; and the unrequited desire had to lead to ennobling of the lover. The play Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare can be read as a satire of courtly love as opposed to a tragic love story celebrating it. This is because Shakespeare mocks “ideal” beauty conventions, suggest that courtly love is not actually love, and uses irony to exaggerate its effects.

In Act 1 scene 5, sixteen-year-old Romeo Montague is at the Capulet house when he first lays eyes on thirteen-year-old Juliet Capulet. He asks, “Did my heart love till now? Foreswear it, sight, for I ne’er saw true beauty till this sight”(1.5.50-51). Romeo has completely forgotten about his former crush Rosaline, and has fallen in love with Juliet. This scene can be seen as Petrarchan because like in Petcharch’s sonnets to his beloved Laura, Romeo idealizes Juliet through metaphors and similes. Romeo describes Juliette as “a snowy dove trooping with crows/ As younder lady o’er her fellows shows”(1.5. 45-6), meaning she outshines the other women like a white dove in the middle of a flock of crows. In Sonnet 130, another one of Shakespeare’s works, he ridicules these Petrarchan clichés that idealize women beyond compare. In his sonnet, he declares: “I think my love as rare/As any she belied with false compare” (13-14). He is essentially saying that he ...

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...onclusion, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet has proven to be a satire of courtly love conventions as opposed to a romantic tragedy that celebrates courtly love. It is no surprise that Shakespeare’s mockery of courtly love within sonnet 130 was also present within this play. Romeo’s Petrarchan words that idealize Juliet ultimately make Juliet realize how irrational Romeo is being. By following the book (following courtly love conventions), Romeo emphasizes how courtly loves is merely the love for the idea of being in love rather than actual love. The courtly love within this play is never seen as a purifying and noble experience because ironically, this adolescent fling resulted in a death count higher than the number of days Romeo and Juliet were together for.

Bibliography

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. 57-119.

Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 130. 11.

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