‘Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love’. Shakespeare’s world is foreign to us only in some of its customs and value systems. The variations he plays in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ on love, it’s corollaries and antitheses are timeless. What

All Shakespeare’s tragedies examine a flaw in human nature. ‘Othello’ deals with jealousy, ‘Macbeth’ with ambition and ‘Romeo and Juliet’ deals with the fatal proximity of love to hate. Shakespeare shows us that love has many different facets and contrasts, but are his theories still valid today? In this essay I hope to find out.

The first example we see of love is to be found in the first scene. This is love as carnal satisfaction. To Sampson and Gregory, love means only the rape of Montague women, they will ‘thrust his[Lord Montague’s] maids to the wall.’ It is hinted that the serving men of both houses share this idea of love- these are men of simple tastes.

Another aspect of love displayed in our first meeting of Romeo. This is courtly, unrequited love. Romeo is deeply in love with Rosaline but she has chosen a life of chastity. Romeo’s first love is stale and sterile; nothing can ever come of it. Romeo is not so much in love as obsessed with Rosaline. H...