The True Essence of Romantic Love

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Recommended: Analysis of William Shakespeare

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, love is exemplified more ways that we can imagine, from the undying love of two people to parental love. Love celebrated by the protagonists with playful sonnets to express their endearment and love for one another. Love that transcends from such powerful gazes and translates into an undying love. Society’s encroachment to a very innate and fundamental aspect of our being is met with violence and death. We must not forget that the very essence of love is that you cannot control love. It is innate, a reflex if you will, and for everyone the Holy Grail of life.
In the prologue, the narrator begins with “A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;” (prologue 6). The protagonists are being revered as celestial bodies where two planets collide in love. The reverence to the heavens signals a higher kind of love that has no bounds and is infinite as the heavens. The narrator sets us up with a glorified love that will prevail even in death. In the first scene of the play, Romeo was asked about his love. He replies, “Out of her favor, where I am in love” (1.1.173). Romeo is referring to her love, Rosaline, where he reflects on an unrequited love. While Benvolio sympathizes with Romeo’s plight and suggests to Romeo a solution to his unrequited love with Rosaline is to find a new love: “Take thou some new infection to thy eye,/And the rank poison of the old will die” (1.2.51-52). Romeo truly believes in true love even expressing
Ty 2 that though love is blind it still finds two total strangers to fall in love, when he says, “Alas that love, whose view in muffled still,/Should without eyes see pathways to his will” (1.1.176-177)! When Romeo finally lays eyes on Juliet, “Did my heart love till...

... middle of paper ...

...respass sweetly urged!/ Give me
Ty 5 my sin again” (1.5.120-121) Romeo takes Juliet’s bait, the guilt of having to take his sins, he then kisses her again to take it all back. Nice little trickery from Juliet to induce another kiss. Juliet finishes, “You kiss by th’ book” (1.5.122) She enjoyed the playfulness of both of their exchanges, implying that his experience in this game called love.
Let one celebrate life’s most fundamental aspect, love. Teach it in our homes, classrooms, workplaces, churches, playgrounds, movies, songs, and more importantly to one another. It is the very backbone of our humanity. Love supersedes all. Glorify and respect what love has to offer. Let us not confuse love with the connotation of sexual notions. Sex may be a component of love but there is more to love than just sex. Finally, to love one another culminates into great things.

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