Defining Romeo in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Defining Romeo in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies. It was

written it about 1597 by William Shakespeare and was set in the

northern Italian city of Verona. It is based on the long poem 'The

Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562)', by Arthur Brooke. In

this essay I will analyse the changes in Romeo's character during

Shakespeare's play.

The first scene I will analyse is Act 1 Scene 1. In this scene Romeo

is very unhappy about a girl named Rosaline. We can tell this by the

language he uses. Romeo uses riddles and oxymoron's to suggest

confusion about how he feels for Rosaline, e.g.: "Feather of lead". He

is also wallowing in his own misery, as though he is enjoying being so

miserable because he feels so in love with Rosaline, although he

barely knows her. Romeo and Rosaline is an example of 'Courtly Love',

which would have been around in the days of Shakespeare. Courtly Love

was where the man fell in love with a woman of higher social class and

she rejected him at first to save her honour and grace. This made the

mans passion increase, and only his faith in god would keep him going.

This is how Romeo and Rosalines relationship appears to be, as Romeo

believes Rosaline does not like him.

The next scene is Act 1 Scene 5. In this scene Romeo meets Juliet for

the first time. He instantly falls madly in love with her. This shows

how fickle his love for Rosaline was, he forgets about her the moment

he sees Juliet. However this time his language is a lot different. He

begins to talk of images of light and jewels whilst describing Juliet:

"O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright." In this scene he is

now not fickle. The language he uses in the flirtatious sonnet (a poem

usually about love) is more convincing because they are talking to

each other and it shows that they do genuinely love each other, rather