Sides Of Love In Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet

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Different faces of love in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Love is one of the main themes throughout William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. We see how affection grows between the two tenagers, and how their lives unfold after they have found each other. Love is a double-edge sword, a force that can drive affection and hope, but it also can drive hate, rivalry, violence and death. On this paper, I want to approach the different sides of love portrayed in the play, and how it affects the outcome at the end of the story. Love is portrayed as a force of nature that cannot be controlled, a violent and overwhelming feeling that forces the individual to go against what it is expected of them from their families. To the audience, Romeo …show more content…

Your assistant in this I’ll gladly be. This marriage may prove in the end, To turn your families into friends.” (Shakespeare p. 38)
He also devises the plan to help Juliet achieve her plans of evading her marriage to Paris, while she waited fro Romeo’s return.
Rivalry is another big topic throughout the play, Shakespeare even mentions it in the first line of the prologue giving the reader a preview of the tribulations these families are facing. “Two families in Verona, Italy, equally respected, Have been feuding for many years”(Shakespeare p. 5). The reader never gets an explanation as to why these families hate each other, what was the reason for it, but the situation is known throughout Verona. Hate and rivalry can come from a place of deception, affection wrongfully deceived by one of the parties.
As a result of the rivalry between the two houses, there is a great amount of violent and deadly situations surrounding characters in this play. In the first act, Shakespeare give us another statement of it is about to …show more content…

I feel that it will lead to my early death.
But may he who has so far steered my life
Direct my sail! Press on gentlemen!” (p. 20)
This is another example of fate being represented in the play, Romeo accepts that whatever is coming to him is written in the stars and already written by God himself.
Romeo and Juliet’s love is tainted by the death of two of their family members, one of them by the hands of Romeo himself. Juliet’s love for Romeo is tested in that moment, when she learns that her beloved has killed her cousin: “Evil angel! Wolf-eating lamb! Oh Romeo, You are the opposite of what you seemed” (shakespeare p. 55) But lines later, she reprimands herself and the nurse for the ill words she casted on her love and husband.
Love is a force that opens up people 's heart to good sentiments or bad intentions. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the two main characters go through a rollercoaster of emotions brought by their love for each other but also by their families rivalry. It is this fight between the two entities that brings up the violence in the younger members, and subsequently the tragic ending with the death of Romeo and

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