Romeo and Juliet Love and Hate in

Romeo and Juliet Love and Hate in Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a play about both love and hate, and can be viewed as both a comedy and a tragedy. The comic structure according to the ancients was social in nature and ended with the restoration of social order. Tragedy was personal -- it was used primarily, as Aristotle said, to effect a kind of catharsis (or cleansing of the emotions) through the witnessing of a great man falling.

Romeo and Juliet employs two structures to show the struggle between love and hate. Love, Shakespeare suggests, is ultimately more important, as the feuding Capulets and Montagues show at the play's conclusion, "burying their strife," finally, with the death of their children. The hatred between the two families, however, adds the tragic element to the drama -- it is the hero's and the heroine's deaths that bring the families together.

This paper will show how love in Rome and Juliet is Shakespeare's antidote to the poison that exists in society; and it will also show how difficult it is for such love to bear fruit in a world where unreasonable hatred is so well-nurtured. The play begins with a senseless battle between the servants of the feuding families -- a battle that escalates into an enormous brawl that disturbs the streets of Verona.

The Prince reveals to the audience that such fighting has happened not once, not twice, but thrice -- and that should it happen again, the punishment will be death: "If ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace" (1.1.99-100). The love that blooms between the daughter of Capulet and the son of Montague becomes a solution to the feud in the eyes of the priest: "This alliance may so happy prove to turn your households' rancor to pure love" (2.3.91-92).

But in the eyes of Tybalt, Romeo's attendance at the Capulet ball (where he first spies Juliet) is an offense that must be avenged. His confrontation with Romeo in Act III leads to a fight between Mercutio and Tybalt when Romeo refuses to brawl: "I do protest I never injured thee, but love thee better than thou canst devise" (3.1.69-70). When Mercutio is slain, Romeo is incensed to vengeance and slays Tybalt.

The Prince banishes Romeo, and the priest who hoped to put an end to the fighting by marrying the children of the warring families is now too afraid to admit that the two have been wed. Their love is being crushed by the hatred that both families have for one another. Instead of speaking out, the priest devises a plan whereby Juliet can escape the will of her father (which is to marry Paris).

The plan, of course, goes awry, and Romeo kills himself in despair, believing his love to be dead. Juliet then wakes to find her lover gone and kills herself. The truth of their love for one another now comes before the eyes of the families and the Prince is left to rebuke them both: "See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, that heaven finds means to kill your joys with love" (5.3.293-294). The two families finally.