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How Shakespeare Presents the Theme of Love in Romeo and Juliet

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How Shakespeare Presents the Theme of Love in Romeo and Juliet Works Cited Missing Shakespeare presents the theme of love in different ways for each of the characters and for some, such as Romeo, Shakespeare's portrayal of this theme changes as the play progresses. Shakespeare's first portrayal of the theme of love is in the first act when Romeo is talking of his love for Rosaline with Benvolio. Here Romeo is very confused as he uses oxymorons such as 'o brawling love, o loving hate,' (line 107) which shows how he is confused by his relationship with Rosaline as …show more content…

We see Romeo's view of the idea of love change entirely in this scene as he stops thinking of love in a bad way as he was tormented by Rosaline and begins to compare it to a religion, something which would have been very close to the hearts of Shakespeare's original audience. Romeo expresses this in many places in the scene, most notable on line 96wwhen he says 'saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch. Act two scene two is when Romeo returns to find Juliet in the Capulet's orchard. The danger of going into the Capulet grounds firstly as a Montague and secondly as Tybalt tried to kill him at the party shows how much danger Romeo is willing to put himself in order to see Juliet again. When they meet and begin to talk, Juliet begins to ask very practical questions such as 'how cam'st thou hither?' (Line 62 II ii) This firstly shows Juliet's caring for Romeo's safety but this is more traditionally what a man would do fro a woman and then Romeo replies 'with love's light wings did I o'erpearch these walls,' (line 66 II ii) This is a completely different way how Romeo is expressing his love for Juliet as Romeo uses the conventional ways of expressing his love which is the complete opposite of how Juliet expresses her love and he also does not answer her

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