What are the chief aspects of their relationship and how are these aspects emphasised by Romeo and Juliet's use of language?.
Romeo and Juliet is undoubtedly the most famous love story in English literary history; love is the play's dominant and most important theme. Shakespeare has focused on romanticism, specifically the intense love and passion that flourishes between the two characters after their first sighting of each other. Love in this play has many guises; it is violent, ecstatic, and an overpowering force that disregards values such as loyalty and emotions. We discover how through their love, Romeo and Juliet become so entwined with each other that they go on to defy families, friends and ruler so they can be together. In fact the love within this play is a powerful and brutal emotion that captures Romeo and Juliet and propels them against their beliefs, their world and at times against themselves.
When Romeo first sees Juliet, he is already in love, or so he thinks, as Rosaline dominates his thoughts, so much so that he has become sullen and moody in his thoughts and behaviour. His first sighting of Juliet changes his thoughts completely; he readily admits that until that moment he has never seen true beauty. All he sees in Juliet is something so beautiful and pure that he immediately forgets his love for Rosaline. He falls instantly in love, and is transfixed by Juliet's purity, it is at this moment that his adulation starts. His language becomes filled with religious reflections, and he compares Juliet's being to that of saintliness.
In Act I Scene V, Shakespeare uses a sonnet for the first dialogue that Romeo and Juliet share; a sonnet has fourteen lies and ten syllables in each line. The rhyme scheme is structured as follows; the first eight lines A-B-A-B-C-D-C-D The following four lines E-F-E-F, the final rhyming couplet G-G. This is traditionally a love poem about unrequited .
