Romeo And Juliet Analysis

1103 Words3 Pages

The play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is written by a man named William Shakespeare, famous for his poetry, play writing and known for shaping the English Language. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is based on a tragedy of characters Romeo and Juliet who die reuniting their families after many years of hatred. In this essay I am going to be exploring how the writer uses religious imagery in Act 1 Scene 5, love shown in Act 2 Scene 2, love seen to be deathly Act 5 Scene 3 and an analysis of two poems with comparisons to Romeo and Juliet and each other.
In Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 5, our eyes encounter a love sonnet with various usage of religious imagery. It deliberates how religion played an importance to residents in Verona: The play’s setting. A sonnet was something Elizabethan audiences were particularly fond of integrating by fourteen lines.
Throughout this sonnet, love and religion is merged together to create a sacred union. Romeo sees Juliet for the first time at Capulets manor party. Unidentified just yet they are arch enemies. Religious imagery is shown when Romeo addresses how Juliet is ‘This Holy Shrine’ implying ‘Shrine’ as someone to worship, give all devotion to. Her looks are just beautiful in his view, completely smitten by them. Disregarding he’d just gotten out of a relationship with Rosaline, Juliet must be special.
Flattered, Juliet plays back to Romeo also showing religious imagery reassuring him to a ‘pilgrim’ she models palm-to-palm like a prayer that ‘saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch’ demonstrating a connection has been established, she already gained respect for him. A shrine-to-pilgrim is like kissing in a polite manner suggesting during Elizabethan times religion was quite momentous to their everyday live...

... middle of paper ...

...sing your virginity in those days was considered shameful before marriage. The narrator paradoxes to show she could have been a pure woman now people see her as ‘unclean’. It shows the reader that it was a mistake that she’d like to take it back, it crumbled her reputation and knowledgeable to readers over what happened. A reader would feel she was tricked for the lord’s pleasure; generally no feelings were mutual like the narrator had for him.
Line 45 the narrator talks about her son quoting ‘my fair-haired son, my shame, my pride’ using an oxymoron to underline despite the regret of pre-marital sex she loves her son, though her ‘shame’ being born out of wedlock considering in those times it was sinful to do, the son is her rock forever. This makes a reader feel happy for her because she has a son to love and nurture, he will respect his mother unlike his father.

Open Document