Romeo and Juliet The Definition of Love

The Definition of Love: Romeo and Juliet
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is often considered to be the greatest love story of all time. The two young lovers fall in love at first sight, sacrifice everything for one another, and are cruelly separated by their warring families. As a result of a series of tragic misunderstandings and the obstacles created by their parents and society, the young lovers are driven to suicide. The play seems to define true love as something which is all-consuming and can only be understood by people who have personally endured its slings and arrows. On the other hand, it also suggests that love can test the characters of young people and elevate the soul.
Although Romeo and Juliet are often presented as blindly in love, the character of Juliet in particular often shows a great deal of maturity in her attitude to her passion. While she loves Romeo with all of her heart, she knows that the sudden and all-consuming nature of it is dangerous and has a dark side. Juliet says, even as she declares her love to Romeo that she has no delight in their contract because: “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden; /Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be/Ere one can say 'It lightens’” (2.2). Juliet gains a maturity over the course of the narrative, transforming from an immature child who cannot even imagine being married to a woman who is able to take responsibility for her actions and takes a calculated risk to be with the man she loves. Even the impulsive Romeo switches his affection from a cold woman named Rosalind who cannot love him back to reevaluating the conflict between the Montagues and Capulets. He attempts to stop the fight between the Montagues and Capulets, because of his loyalty to Juliet, though this ultimately ends in the tragic death of his friend Mercutio and Juliet’s cousin Tybalt.
Love is transforming and passionate, but caring for another person can also educate and mature the young. Ultimately, for all of the follies love causes in the play, the romance between the young lovers motivates their parents to mend the breach between the two families. But love is also violent because of its all-consuming nature, and also transforms many of the relationships of the young people in the play in a negative fashion. Juliet experiences a break with both her father and mother, when they attempt to force her to marry Paris. She even finally rejects her beloved nurse, who has acted as a mother figure to her throughout the play, when the nurse suggests she enter a bigamous relationship rather than defy her parents.
The love of Romeo and Juliet ultimately separates them from the other people they have been close to in their lives. Mercutio, who has never known love, cannot understand Romeo. Juliet’s parents were not a love match. Her nurse can only see love in a sexual sense. While their love is healing in the sense that it elevates both of them and brings them to adulthood, enabling them to move beyond the prejudices of their age, it is also destroying in the sense that they must break away from a society that only understands hate, not love. The core values of society do not promote love, but run counter to it.


Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Homepage. Web. February 9, 2019.
http://shakespeare.mit.edu/romeo_juliet/