Romeo and Juliet are widely considered to be one of the greatest love stories ever told. In this article, we will research in more detail how love is presented in Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare tells the story of two young people so in love that they would rather die than live without each other. The theme of love is woven into every scene of the play, the different forms of love are also explored by Shakespeare. Shakespeare presents love as complex and ever-changing through his use of oxymorons. It contrasts the purity of first love with the passionate and uncontrollable force of emotion, and further, with the thoughts and feelings of infatuation against long-lasting love and marriage. He uses existing conventions, as well as his own elaborate language and imagery, to further present love as unrequited, elevated and sacred, physical, and linked to violence and death. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Unrequited love is depicted through Romeo's infatuation with Rosaline; instead of bringing her joy, he becomes depressed because his love is one-sided and she doesn't feel the same. In Act 1, Scene 1, Romeo uses a range of oxymorons to express his emotions regarding love. “O brawling love, o loving hatred.” The verb “brawl” is used here as an adjective and has connotations of fighting, which emphasizes the conflict within the play. The oxymoron between “fight” and “love” represents the contrast between the love of Romeo and Juliet with the quarrels and violence of the family feud. This also foreshadows the amount of violence that will occur throughout the play between the families and ties into the important theme of the coexistence of love and hate. Romeo's endless list of oxymorons, from "lead feather", "live smoke", "cold fire" to "ill health", suggest Romeo's inability to understand what is before him and his general confusion in matters of 'love. In addition to this, it strongly alludes to Romeo's immature and inexperienced character, as well as his tendency to make hasty decisions. This is reinforced when Juliet says in Act 2, Scene 2, "too rash, too imprudent, too sudden, too like lightning", the asyndetic list draws on the simile which sums up Romeo's character as someone 'one of reckless and impulsive. Additionally, while we can view the relationship between Romeo and Juliet as one of mutual love, each of their own inabilities to clearly discuss their own relationship without using oxymorons contrasting with their speech makes their love seem is not shared. Religious love becomes more of an apparent relationship. the presentation of love as we progress through the play and events such as the marriage between Juliet and Paris become more and more relevant to the plot. The pure and chaste religious imagery of Romeo and Juliet's meeting contrasts with Act 5 Scene 3 where the imagery becomes sexualized. In many cultures, sex is a way of consummating a marriage and thus completes the unification of the couple. In the play, the couple is unified in death and the sexual imagery symbolizes the consummation of their unity in the afterlife. Romeo drinks to his death from a round flask which, in Elizabethan times, was an allusion to female sexuality. This combines with the action of Juliet killing herself with a dagger, a phallic symbol which could also be seen as representing a re-consummation of the marriage. This shows how much love they hadtranscendental and capable of connecting them on three levels: physically, mentally and spiritually. The fact that the two lovers die together also cements their undying devotion to each other, and further introduces their relationship and deepens the theme of love, as being entirely based in religion. Emotional and physical love are sharply contrasted by Shakespeare and the concept. is illustrated in various places throughout the play. In Act 1Scene 4, Mercutio says that if "love is hard on you, be hard on love." This alludes to the sexual nature of love which is physical and not pure. This also suggests that love can also be emotionally "rough", which is evident in the way Romeo suffers from unrequited love. In Act 2, Scene 1, Mercutio subverts the conventions of Romantic poetry by describing Rosaline's body. He lists the parts of her body saying: "conjures you by Rosaline's shining eyes, by her high forehead and her scarlet lip, by her slender foot, her straight leg and her quivering thigh." This shows that Mercutio reduces what was previously a love-filled romance for Rosaline to nothing more than a sexual description of her body. Later, the brother shows his lack of emotional understanding in this scene by saying that "young men's love does not really lie in their hearts, but in their eyes", essentially ignoring the idea that love can be anything something that comes from the heart. This could be seen as Shakespeare highlighting the superficial nature of love, perhaps coating the whole play in irony and showing a new view of love, one that contradicts the more idealized romantic conventions of the time. This idea is further explored when the friar says that Romeo only “worshipped” Rosaline. This form of sexual love is not reserved for men. The nurse examines Romeo's body and comments that "his leg surpasses that of all men." The nurse's sexualized view of Romeo contrasts with the emotional attachment Juliet feels toward him. This could be seen as Shakespeare emphasizing how Romeo and Juliet's love transcends the conventional ideas of love that we see in Lady Capulet, the Nurse, and Mercutio. As a result, Shakespeare's presentation of love seems not just emotional, but physical and highlights the impulsiveness of Romeo's actions in the play as he quickly moves from Rosaline to Juliet, seemingly due to their attraction physical. The passionate love of Romeo and Juliet is disrupted by the violence and conflicts that take place in the play. However, while some might think that conflict corrupts their love, it actually fuels it and makes it more powerful. The amalgamation of love and violence is what characterizes the drama as a tragedy. Love is also linked to violence and death in many other ways in the play. In Act 1, Scene 1, Sampson and Gregory describe acts of violence and rape with the use of a "bare weapon". The word “naked” fills the description with both sexual ideas of intimacy but also highlights an idea of ​​truth. The juxtaposition of this term with “weapon” which has connotations of violence once again highlights how much overlap there is between love and hate. It is said with the desire to "throw Montague's maids against the wall" and rape the women. Rape can be seen as violence infiltrating what is supposed to be an act of love and intimacy. The use of the sonnet form, traditionally used to describe love, is used by Shakespeare to describe death and strife. He uses bloody imagery of "civilian blood makes civilian hands unclean", which highlights how