Textuality » 4ALS Interacting

NSoranzo- Romeo And Juliet's first meeting
by NSoranzo - (2013-10-29)
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This scene describes Romeo, who seeing Juliet, falls in love instantly and forgets Rosaline. All the fact happened during the Capulet feast. Romeo was mask because his family and Capulet were in conflict. Romeo and Juliet continue their exchanges and they kiss.

This scene is writes with a language that captures both the excitement and wonder that the two protagonists feel. When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, he is struck by her beauty and breaks into a sonnet. The imagery Romeo uses to describe Juliet gives important insights into their relationship. Romeo initially describes Juliet as a source of light, like a star, against the darkness: "she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night." As the play progresses, a cloak of interwoven light and dark images is cast around the pair.

In the beginning Romeo ask to a servant who is that ladyà the word lady underline a a particular lexical choice because he didn’t call her woman, girl but “lady”, so he wanted to underline her importance. After the conversation with the servant started the conversation between Romeo and Juliet. This part start with a metaphor, in which Romeo ingeniously manages to convince Juliet, this metaphor also introduce information about the rest of the poem. Romeo's use of religious imagery from this point on — as when he describes Juliet as a holy shrine — indicates a move towards a more spiritual consideration of love as he moves away from the inflated, overacted descriptions of his love for Rosaline. But there is also a contrast between spiritual love and body love, indeed Romeo ‘s statements about Juliet border on the heretical. When Romeo and Juliet meet they speak just fourteen lines before their first kiss. These fourteen lines make up a shared sonnet, with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg. A sonnet is a perfect, idealized poetic form often used to write about love.

The use of the sonnet, however, also serves a second, darker purpose. With a single sonnet, Shakespeare finds a means of expressing perfect love and linking it to a tragic fate.

The lovers are repeatedly associated with the dark, an association that points to the secret nature of their love because this is the time they are able to meet in safety. At the same time, the light that surrounds the lovers in each other's eyes grows brighter to the very end, when Juliet's beauty even illuminates the dark of the tomb. The association of both Romeo and Juliet with the stars also continually reminds the audience that their fate is "star-cross'd."

In a single conversation, Juliet transforms from a proper, timid young girl to one more mature, who understands what she desires and is quick-witted enough to procure it.

 

Though Romeo and Juliet has become an archetypal love story, it is in fact a reflection of only one very specific type of love – a young, irrational love that falls somewhere between pure affection and unbridled lust. Sexuality is rampant throughout the play, starting with the servants' bawdy jokes in the first scene. Also, the lovers do not think of their passion in religious terms (a religious union would have signified a pure love to a Renaissance audience)

 

However, the love between Romeo and Juliet is not frivolous. In the scene, the lovers speak in a sonnet that invokes sacrilegious imagery of saints and pilgrims.  Both Romeo and Juliet believe in the purity of their love - their future may be uncertain, but in the moment, their passion is all-consuming.