Saturday, January 4, 2014

How does Shakespere present a negative view of love, in Romeo and Juliet?If there are any quotes that relate to this question, please provide.

In Romeo and Juliet, Friar Laurence is probably Shakespeare's voice for his negative view of the impetuousness of young love:



These violent delights have violent ends,/And in their triumph die, like fire and powder/Which as they kiss consume, The sweetest honey/Is loathsome in his own deliciousness,/And in the taste confounds the appetitie.  Therefore, love moderately, long love doth so,/Too swift arrives, as tardy as too slow. (II,vi,9-20)



This motif of the haste and poor judgment of the young lovers as responsible for their fates points to the detrimental effects of "violent delights."  In only three days, the lovers, meet, fall in love, get married, are separated, and then die.  Neither of the lovers stops to reason anything out.  When Romeo, for instance, hears that Juliet is dead, he rushes to buy poison and hurries to the family crypt without trying to find Friar Laurence and ascertain what has really happened.  There is little doubt that the haste of Romeo and his love, Juliet, is tragic, indeed.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Discuss at least two characteristics of Romanticism in John Keat's poem "Ode toa Nightingale".

The poet in Ode To A Nightingale  is an escapist .He escapes through imagination .On his way the bower of the bliss wher the nightingale is ...