Love
Shakespeare stages multiple competing versions of love. Romeo's opening love for Rosaline is pure Petrarchan performance — a catalogue of oxymorons ('O brawling love, O loving hate'). His love for Juliet, by contrast, is immediate and total. The Nurse sees love as bawdy and pragmatic. Paris represents the socially correct, arranged match. Shakespeare asks which of these forms of love is real — and whether the most intense kind can ever survive the world.
How it develops
Act 1: Romeo's performative love for Rosaline. Act 1 Scene 5: the sonnet Romeo and Juliet share on first meeting. Act 2: the balcony scene transforms love from fantasy into vows. Act 3: love is tested against banishment. Act 5: love becomes a death-pact in the tomb.
Supporting quotes
- "O brawling love, O loving hate" (1.1)
- "My only love sprung from my only hate!" (1.5)
- "Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow" (2.2)
- "These violent delights have violent ends" (2.6)
- "Thus with a kiss I die" (5.3)