How has love been presented in Romeo and Juliet? In this essay I will discuss Shakespeare’s feelings towards love and the different ways that he uses the story of Romeo and Juliet to communicate them to his audience. In Act 1 Scene 4, Mercutio and Benvolio mock Romeo for allowing his love for Rosaline to make him weak. We see this in the quote, ‘If love be rough with you, be rough with love// Prick love for pricking you and beat love down’. This shows Romeo’s friends think he should hate love for making him look weak and stop displaying his unrequited love for Rosaline.
Many audience members could interpret this in a slightly mocking way, scorning at Romeo’s exaggerative behaviour and perceiving it to be somewhat sardonic humour. On the contrary, some members of the audience may in fact feel sympathetic towards Romeo, connecting the oxymorons with his lovesick mind. However the audience choose to interpret Romeo’s oxymorons today, a 17th century audience would have in fact admired him. The idea of unrequited Petrarchan love, in which the male lusts poetically over the female, was very fashionable at the time in which the
Orsino exaggerated caricature of a lovesick character is comedic as the audience are made aware of his melodrama. Shakespeare used a character of high respect and status such as the duke, and portrayed him as a character the audience pity as a result of love. Seeing the Duke so desperate and weak give the character he is lusting after empowerment, this links the Twelfth night celebration, switching the roles of characters. When talking of love in Act 1 Scene 1, Orsino appears to thrive on the drama of his pathetic situation, which is perhaps why he overplays it. This suggests to the audience that Orsino get enjoyment out of the drama and tragedy of love.
This reflects the fact that he is self conscious and cautious when it comes to relationships. Another allusion to a biblical character was to Lazarus, who, like the character in the epigraph at the beginning of the poem, went to hell, but came back to life and talked about it. This allusion, like the epigraph, is parallel to the poem. Prufrock sees himself as being in hell; because of his lack of social ability, and like the person in the epigraph, wants to talk about
He begins by talking about the state of guilt he is presently feeling; followed by feelings of immense regret, and ending with frustration. A few lines are also said by the executers in this passage, Ratcliff and Lovell, who seem rather indifferent to the idea of assassinating Hastings. This is the culmination of the morale deterioration that has been demonstrated throughout the play as a reoccurring theme. Hastings boldly starts off this passage by using an epizeuxis. “Woe, woe for England!
The third phase is that the narrator or writer cannot admit how they feel about the person or object and are sometimes confused as to why they are so infatuated with it. In each piece of work, the narrator becomes obsessed when talking about how much they hate the object of their love. The story in “Hate Poem” revolves around the feeling of hatred toward a person, but the real meaning behind the speaker’s hatred is actually love. The narrator goes through great amounts of effort to get the reader and herself to believe that she hates her significant other. However, the words that she uses to describe these feelings make her sound like she is obsessed with him: Everything about me hates you (2) The way I hold my pencil hates you (4) My aorta hates you.
When he talks about Rosaline it seems as though he is acting the part of an unrequited lover. We notice this, along with Benvolio, which makes his love almost comical as we know that it is not serious. Also he often says “O” with a sign. This makes the audience feel that he is being melodramatic. This expression of anguish seems over the top.
The poem shows the weakness of women and how much we depend on men. The writer in ‘Medusa’ is so paranoid and jealous because she has a suspicion that her husband is cheating on her. There is no evidence throughout the text that he actually is. She is driven crazy by paranoia and also questions her own beauty- ‘wasn’t I beautiful?’- showing that she lacks self-confidence and feels vulnerable. Women often feel belittled by men, lose their self-confidence and feel ashamed of themselves.
The persona is visible to be psychologically imbalanced and sexually confused. He describes someone who has succumbed to temptation as ‘mad’, thereby implying that he himself has lost all sanity. This is also clarified in sonnet 147 as he declares ‘my thoughts and my discourse are as a madman’s are’. The general tone of the sonnet being so personal also shows that someone with first hand experience ‘of lust in action’ has written this poem Further on down sonnet 129 the persona uses personification as he describes lust as ‘full of blame’. This is ludicrous, as an abstract feeling cannot be blamed for the offender’s actions.
The Study of George It was the writer Joss Wheldon who said, “Loneliness leads to nothing good, only detachment. And sometimes the people who most need to reach out are the people least capable of it.” This shows that those who are lonely are those who are scared to speak out about it. Loneliness affects us all. It frightens people so much they can’t say anything about it. This is like the Great Depression when people just carried on with their lives not caring for others just for themselves.