romeo

Question 1

romeo at first thesis

Answer 1

Though unknown to a contemporary audience romeo woudlve been a very popular trope of a coutryly lover and a petrachan romantic whos naivity is often a facade for his lust driven teenage mind

Question 2

romeo at first ideas

Answer 2

• exaggerated hyperbole in his words
• he is not himself as many teenagers are changed by the temporary hormonal altering, he is deemed apart from himself by his friends- even he admits that ‘this is not romeo’ his actions cannot affect his peers as his naive and warped perception of the unrecpirocal romance he is experiencing means he is a completely separate entity to whom they may be familiar with
• mercutio and indeed all his friends are deeply mocking of his actions and accuse him of just being interested in sex and this is clear of the paradoxal daulity in male relations between their attitudde and their own actions as romeo heavily denies this and mocks mercutios attempts to find him with the promise of rosalines ‘quivering thigh’ yet he himself makes abrupt references to the godess diana of chastity and the speed in which he abandones rosaline leads us to infer that he feels no genuine connection with her aside from a shallow lust driven interest
• even his level headed friends like benvolio tease romeo and his naivyt means that he cannot reciproacte the humour, telling them miserably of love as a ‘smoke raised with the fumes of sighs’ this metaphor sreveals to us that though he has an interest in love unlike his peers he has a warped perception of it, seeing it as something fleeting and interesting but only momentary, indeed until juliet he can be argued to be very lust driven.
• we don’t ever see rosalind so she shows love to be an abstract concept rather than a real thing
• “makes himself an artificial night”
  -“ o brawling love. o loving hate” imperfect sonnet, flawed perception of love, oxymorons highlight the ineffable quality of love

Question 3

romeo as masculine thesis

Answer 3

Throughout the text romeo is a juxtaposiiton to his much more conformkst masculine counterparts who are held down by adire need for pride and respect, romeo focusses firstly on courtly love and human passion and then latercon the equality of love rather than the traditional chrsitian marital values of women serving their husbands, rather he loves his wife on a equal scale

Question 4

romeo as masculine paragraph

Answer 4

• he is described as breathing heavily and having tears in his eyes, an outward display of emotion, whilst also being found ‘underneath the grove of a sycamore’- this is new to the play but not new to the audienceas he embodies a naive unreciprocated courtly lover lusting after rosaline, his comes starkly after the violent first act setting a stark contrast between romeo and the vehicles for hegemonic masculinity
• though romeo begins with a naive and comedic outlook on love, interestingly its his relations with julliet that mature him, this is interesting as women usuakly had no say and were starkly inferior with no ability to express their own desires. He could be mocked by an elizabethan audience for his willingness to follow her orders of when and where to marry
• The interesting hierachal shift between the two is expressed through a semnatic field of religion that deems julliet to be a divine power, ‘holy shrine’, ‘pilgrim’ and ‘winged messanger of heaven’ all paint imagery of julliet emodiying a divine figure wilst romeo a mortal, her setting is physically above him on the balcony. Romeo continues this motif by claiming with her hell be ‘new baptised’- he plans on adopting her name something completely unheard of
• he laterclaims that her ‘beauty hath made me effeminate’ here romeo is showing how heavy the effects of human love are as he is now showing accentuated traits of femeninity that he does not repel
• he, despite the morror of his friends, choses to ignore masculine pride and conformism and not accpet tybolts duel- of which his feinds see as ‘vile submission’
• theres a semantic field of bird imagery when romeo and juliet meet where he dehumanizes himself and promises to be her bird, very effeminate and contemporary
• they share a sonnet, shows their fompatibilty and the reciprocal aspect of love, religious allegory.
• “o she doth teach the torches to burn bright”- light imagery and the rhyming couplets heighten romeo’s intense emotions- he sees her as a divine transcendental being- lexical ky cohesive conflict between light and dark, conflicts the “artificial night” which was his self inflicted darkness

Question 5

change in romeo post julliette quotes

Answer 5

• swear not by the moon, mocking his petrachan metaphorical tone
• now thou art romeo- mecutio and romeo post meeting juliet have a conversation full of wit and banter which lifts the play to a much more satirical tone and mecutio states how he is much more comfortable with this version of romeo
• he does not go to his friends in sadness or lie around under the tree as is naive he is procactive
• he consults only hs paternal figure for advice and though he does not follow the ideas to not run fast as he may trip hes sourced a clever voice of wisdom
• he follows juliet viewing her as a person and her intrsuctions to send wowrd, indeed he is very respectful of her industrctoive langauge
• stops his artificial metaphorical hyperboles and speaks in a much more rational way

Question 6

other paragraph ideas tying into romeo

Answer 6

• paradoxal male relations-
• romeo and mercutios rough friendship eg. quivering thigh, cuts never felt a wound, under your arm, plauge to both of your houses, vile submission
• romeo and friar