Ok, heres the deal, I want to know what you guys think about it. In your opinion do you think Romeo and Juliet were truly in love? I know it's just a play and that it doesn't really matter what you think because the play has already placed the fact of wether or not they're in love. But I want to know what you think. I also want to know if you think that they knew what love was, and if any teenager knows what it is!
2007-11-27 04:08:48 · 23 answers · asked by xX~PiE~Xx 1 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Theater & Acting
To the extent that 2 teenagers 14 and 15 can experience love, then they were in love.
2007-11-27 04:11:58 · answer #1 · answered by Thoreau 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
The class aspect. The difference between rich and poor. Servants are all over this play. Like the scene where the Capulet servant is sent out with a list of people to invite to the feast that night---but the servant can't read (so he gets Romeo to read it to him, which leads to Romeo and Jujliet meeting in the first place). Or when the musicians Paris hired to play at his wedding realize that there won't be a wedding, and far from being paid, they'll be lucky to get a free meal for their trouble. And the apothecary, who only sells the poison to Romeo because he's literally starving to death.
2016-05-26 03:00:11 · answer #2 · answered by ? 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Keep in mind - we're talking Shakespeare. Fiction, in other words.
Back in the 1500-1600's, it was very common for people to marry at an age we would consider scandalously young, in part because people did not live to the elderly ages they do now. If you wanted to reproduce, you had to start early - soon after menses were regular for the young girls. So, while Romeo and Juliet are very young by our standards, they were more emotionally mature because of the environment and expectations they were raised in. Therefore, they would have a better handle on mature love than the teens of the 21st century.
Romantic love ("courtly love") was very popular in the time period that R&J was written (late Elizabethan). In an era of arranged marriages, "star-crossed lovers" of two opposing houses was enough pathos to set the ladies and lords swooning. It was (and is) entertainment. They may have loved each other to the death - but only because that was how Shakespeare could wring the hearts (and wallets) of the theatre goers of his time.
To put it in more modern perspective... people of that era got the same "kick" of romance (or death, or fantasy - see Hamlet or Much Ado...) from plays the way we get ours from movies. Love, hate, etc. are simply ways to elicit specific reactions from the audience.
2007-11-27 04:31:54 · answer #3 · answered by coffeewmn 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
I think it was lust that grew into love. Because the idea of sacrificing your life for another is true love.
Keep in mind although the characters were teenagers, Shakespeare was an adult when he wrote it.
I'm not sure how historically accurate it is but you should watch "Shakespeare in Love" sometime, it's a great movie about the writing of Romeo & Juliet.
2007-11-27 04:14:18 · answer #4 · answered by Diamond24 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
If they were willing to die with each other than they were truly in love. But I dont think the understood the concept of love because Romeo or Juliet would want the other to move on. Because when you love someone you let go.
2007-11-27 04:15:11 · answer #5 · answered by nike300 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Nah. They were in lust, maybe. They just loved the idea of being in love (after all, Romeo was always falling in and out of love - it was part of a pattern for him). They got caught up in the excitement of meeting in secret. They barely knew each other, and you can't truly love someone without knowing them.
But I do think teenagers can fall in love, and know what it is. Maybe not very many, but some are mature, and they do understand that love isn't just about praising and mindlessly adoring someone.
2007-11-27 04:15:07 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Shakespeare would like for you to think that they are truly in love because their first lines to each other create a sonnet. This woul not have been lost on an Elizabethan audience. We might not be quite so tuned in to it, but they were. I guess we would recognize it if they completed a limerick or something a little more recognizable. This is supposed to show a certain like-mindedness, like old married couples who can finish each others' thoughts and sentences. So, in so far as two teenagers can be in love, Shakespeare would like to think that R and J were. You should too.
2007-11-27 05:38:16 · answer #7 · answered by actormyk 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think they were in love to a certain extent, but the play was in the time span of about a week, so Shakespeare most probably exaggerated the love a young couple would have experienced to increase the dramatic irony of the tragedy.
2007-11-27 04:14:24 · answer #8 · answered by Marigold 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Within the admittedly artificial constraints of the play, I would go with Yes. They were deeply, committedly and passionately in Love.
Romeo's earlier infatuations found maturity in the reciprocity of Juliet. They shared an intimacy that went beyond mere teenaged hormonal attraction. Their bond, forged in the crucible of their families' mutual hatred, tempered and honed their Love.
Fat lot of good it did either of them.
2007-11-27 18:41:31 · answer #9 · answered by d_cider1 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Only teenagers know that kind of love--the total instant infatuation, and complete faith in and bonding with your partner that is devoid of any reason. As we get older, we need practial reasons and a caring relationship to make the kind of bond we would create out thin air when we were 15. Marriages to a high school or college sweetheart have the best chance of working out compared to anyone you meet later in life.
So, yes they were in love (as proven by their unwillingness to live without each other)--teenage love, which may be more romantic, stupid, and blind than adult love, but teenage love is just as real.
2007-11-27 04:19:01 · answer #10 · answered by wayfaroutthere 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋