Forbidden Love In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

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“TIme is very slow for those who wait, very fast for those who are scared, very long for those who lament, and very short for those who celebrate. But for those who love, time is eternal.” This is a quote from William Shakespeare, world renowned author of stories like Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, and a Midsummer Night’s Dream. In many of his stories, love is a central theme and is displayed beautifully through his characters. However, in the story Romeo and Juliet, this is not quite. Though many think of it as a bewitching tale of a forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet were not actually in love. What they did share, however, is lust. Romeo and Juliet cannot be in love because they care more about how the other looks than their personality, their affair is hormone driven, and they are selfish and do not care about.
In this tale, Romeo is portrayed as being seventeen or eighteen and Juliet is thirteen, so many readers were probably …show more content…

Shakespeare creates an interesting psychological tension in Romeo and Juliet by consistently linking the intensity of young love with a suicidal impulse. Though love is generally the opposite of hatred, violence, and death, Shakespeare portrays self-annihilation as seemingly the only response to the overwhelming emotional experience that being young and in love constitutes. Romeo and Juliet seem to flirt with the idea of death throughout much of the play, and the possibility of suicide recurs often, foreshadowing their eventual deaths in Act 5. When Juliet misunderstands the Nurse and thinks that Romeo is dead, she does not think that he was killed, but that he killed himself. And thinking that Romeo is dead, Juliet quickly decides that she too must die. She never once thinks that this is not what Romeo wants for her and many will argue that if Romeo would have been alive, he would have begged Juliet not to kill

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