Romeo and Juliet

Introduction

Commonly regarded as the quintessential love tragedy in Western literature, Romeo and Juliet (1595-96) is one of Shakespeare's most popular works. The tragedy details the ill-fated romance of two young lovers, scions of feuding aristocratic families in Renaissance Verona. Despite their families' rancor, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love at first sight and marry secretly with the help of Friar Lawrence.

The monk sees their love as an opportunity to reconcile the two families, but a string of unfortunate events instead culminate in the young lovers' suicides. Romeo's love for Rosaline is a parody of Petrarchism: She is cold, distant, balanced upon a pedestal, and Romeo's love-sick infatuation shows that he is in love hardly with a real person but with the idea of love itself:

Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,

O anything of nothing first create;

O heavy lightness, serious vanity,

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,

Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! (1.1.176-181)

Other current trends in scholarship relating to Romeo and Juliet include discussions of how Shakespeare manipulated and compressed time for dramatic effect in the tragedy, how ambiguous discourse and linguistic crises impact the principal characters' actions, and how divisive political, religious, and civic interests all contribute to the play's catastrophe.

Discussion

Timeless Love is one of the representative elements of Romeo and Juliet. Over time, the protagonists have become regarded as icons of "young love doomed to failure." Several scholars have explored the language and historical context existing in the tragic romance. In their first meeting, Romeo and Juliet use a form of communication (metaphor) conventional recommended by several authors during the time Shakespeare lived. Using them to involve the words "holy" and "sin", Romeo was able to assess feelings of Juliet toward him in an unusual way. This method was also supported by the Italian writer Baldassare Castiglione.

In addition Castiglione advised that if a man used a metaphor as an invitation for a woman, she could pretend not to understand, so that her suitor might retire without loss of honor. Conversely, Juliet metaphor involved in expanding it. Religious terms "grave", "path" and "holy" were very popular in the poetry of the time, showing a propensity for romantic tone, rather than an indirect blasphemy-the term "holiness" was associated with Catholicism some years before writing. Later in the same text, Shakespeare decided to remove the clearest reference to the resurrection of Christ and Easter, elements in The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (Lyon, pp. 124-9 ).

In the "balcony scene" of Shakespeare, Romeo hears Juliet's soliloquy discreetly. However, Brooke's version, she makes her declaration of love being alone. By introducing in the scene where Romeo eavesdrops, the author distances himself from the normal sequence of courtship. Normally, a woman was asked to follow a pattern based on modesty and shyness, so make sure that her suitor was honest. The reason deviating from the sequence mentioned is that a little Shakespeare would expedite the frame.

The love between Romeo ...