The Role Of Women In Romeo And Juliet

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Romeo and Juliet, the story of "star-crossed lovers", is a play earlier written by Arthur Brookes. Shakespeare later on rewrote it and made many changes that improved the play. In Romeo and Juliet he attempts to show the truth and nature of love. He manages to achieve his goal by showing the different types of love throughout the play. For example, he shows Courtly love between Romeo and Rosaline, Romantic love between Romeo and Juliet, Physical love is explored in the first act, and there is also brotherly love between Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio. For Tybalt there is an opposite of love; he has hate more than anything and a passion for violence.

Arthur Brookes first wrote 'The tragicall Historie of Romeus and Juliet' in 1562. Shakespeare …show more content…

Women had to be the ones that stayed home and look after the children and the house, whereas the men had to go out and earn the money to provide for their family. Women were not allowed to go to school or university but they could be home schooled by a tutor. Women were not allowed to act or write for the public stage, so the roles of women in the plays were normally played by young boys. Shakespeare challenges the roles of women using characters in his play, such as Juliet being stronger than Romeo. When Lady Capulet stops Capulet from getting involved, she says "A crutch, a crutch! Why call for your sword." Lady Capulet tries to belittle him and make him feel like he is too old to be fighting and he should just leave it the Prince to end the brawl.

Shakespeare shows the falseness of Romeo's early love by showing the nature of Courtly love. Courtly love is a very rigid and artificial way of showing love for a woman; it has more to do with the appearance of love than actual true love. The idea of courtly love came from an Italian poet, Francesco Petrarch, who wrote many sonnets. Courtly love is impossible love; love from afar which means you could never touch them because they are so above you and you couldn't reach them and don't deserve …show more content…

She thinks it's very artificial and she wants Romeo to get to know her, not her appearance. She tells him she doesn't want to be worshiped: "you do your hand wrong too much." She is telling him that it is ok for Romeo to touch her. There is also a lot of pressure on Juliet, she wants to know that Romeo can show true love because with courtly love it's easy to just get a woman pregnant and leave without a thought for her or the child.

In Act 2, Scene 1 Mercutio is taunting Romeo; he is talking in the courtly love context and basically calling Romeo an idiot for the language he uses. Mercutio says "King Copnetua loved the beggar maid." King Copnetua was a Greek army man, who got sent to Africa. One day he meet a lady who was a beggar and fell in love with her, he took her home and they got married and when they died they got buried together. Mercutio is mocking the image of courtly love because within courtly love, the girl is normally being compared to someone or something superior, such as a

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