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What’s love got to do with it?!

Erudite scholars and critics and specialized commentators on William Shakespeare’s tragicomedy Romeo and Juliet have already written volumes of magnificent articles analyzing the play. And yet, please allow me to appreciate the play so that young students encountering Shakespeare for the first time could gather some information as I understood it.

R n J is an early play of Shakespeare – a tragedy which is widely different from the later tragedies. There are no fundamental questionings into the mystery of human life, no “‘short, quicker probing at the heart of reality”. Nor is there any sense of the mystery of the relations between character and destiny.

In fact, the play is not a tragedy of fate. There is no evil in the play, as in Macbeth or King Lear.

The chief characters are free from any ‘tragic flaw” or inherent weakness of character which partly contributes to their own tragedy as in Hamlet or King Lear.

An 1870 oil painting by Ford Madox Brown depicting Romeo and Juliet's famous balcony scene

The total effect of the play is not any better or touching experience, although there is enough scope for sorrow.It is thus described as a youthful play. But the reservations are really beside the point.

These may be appropriate description from a certain point of view from the total evaluation of Shakespeare’s plays. But we are mainly concerned with Shakespeare’s achievement in this particular play: what is the kind of experience which S was trying to communicate in this play and whether he has suceeded in what he set out to do.

Shakespeare concentrates on one theme – the theme of romantic love and to that he has given perfect expression through the best lyrical poetry - an appropriate embodiment of romantic love or passion.

The measure of his achievement can be seen in that perfect correspondence between the style and the content of his play between the lyrical poetry and the lyrical emotion of love.

“Romantic Love” is too generalized a description of the theme of R & J. The play deals with the sudden growth to maturity and resourcefulness of R & J through the love experience. That is what the play is about.

Shakespeare takes great pains to define the love of R & J and this he does partly through what they say themselves- that is by letting love speak for itself- and he ads it also by the method of contras by letting us know what others think of this subject. In other words, what is intended by others by this term ‘love’.

Their reading of love is quite different from that of the chief characters. Mercutio does not believe in love, but he believes in sex, the sordid trafficking of the flesh. Mercutio tilts at love with a wit. It remains at a cynical and coarse level.

The Capulets have another view of love. They believe in good marriages and sensible choices. The Nurse is vulgar and indecent reminiscing over he pat with evident relish: “My husband –God be with his soul “The Nurse was advising Juliet after Romeo has been exiled. She says “I think it is best you married with the County.”

So it is not surprising that in a play which abound with such contrary views on love the lovers in their first dialogue should talk of palmers, saints and prayers.

If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fire is this
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, heady stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss
Good pilgrims, you do wrong your hand too much
Which mannerly devotion shows in this?
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch
And palm to palm is holy palmers him

In other words the love of Romeo & Juliet is set apart from other conception of love for it is a love pure and sincere and though intense and passionate.

Shakespeare’s play is not merely definition of romantic love. It really traces the development of these characters, the growth to maturity through love. They have been transferred through the love experience.

When Romeo’s love has changed from his early infatuation for Rosaline, from setimental and an affected sort of love, his language too has changed. From the conventional romantic lover of the Elizabethan stage full of paradoxes and artificial conceits, he speaks after meeting with Juliet in a language that is hyperbolic, no doubt but is vivid and intense.

“O, she doth teach the torches to turn bright
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in a Ethiopians’ ear
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight
For I never saw true beauty till this night “
Need I say more on this.

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