Romeo And Juliet
...William Shakespeare's treatment of relationships in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-Upon-Avon, Warwickshire and was alive during the Elizabethan era. He was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language. He wrote at least thirty seven plays and also wrote poems. His plays were comedies, histories and tragedies and some of his most famous ones were Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet. Relationships form the main theme in Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet and there are many different ones, such as infatuation (Rosaline and Romeo), destiny (Romeo and Juliet), parental love (Lord Capulet and Juliet) and arranged marriages (Paris and Juliet). The action of the play Romeo and Juliet is instigated by two warring families who are brought together.
The first relationship I am going to analyse is that of Romeo and Rosaline. I have found that their relationship together is based on infatuation as Romeo is besotted with Rosaline but she is not returning the feelings. Romeo is in despair because Rosaline has sworn not to get married and in the days of Shakespeare you could not live with someone unless married, so their relationship is going no-where. Romeo's unrequited love for Rosaline is reflected by the use of oxymorons in the script. Oxymorons are words that contradict each other and generally show confusion, such as, O heavy lightness,' and feather of lead,' in the script. These are oxymorons because it is not possible to have something heavy and light and it is also not possible to have a feather that weighs as much as lead. This shows that Romeo is confused about his feelings for Rosaline and why Rosaline is not returning them. Another effect of writing Shakespeare uses in the script is the repetition of O.' This is immature dramatics. The effect of this is to show Romeo's...
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