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szdaily -> Budding Writers -> 
Love in truth: Romeo and Juliet (I)
    2016-07-06  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    “My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3:18) This is a quote from the first epistle of John to his church members. John, an old man at this time and an apostle of love, exhorts his “little children” to love “in truth.”

    Though it is a letter addressed to the early church, the admonition to “love in truth” also applies to the audience’s reflection on the romantic experiences of Romeo in the first two acts of William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” In Apostle John’s words, to love “in truth” is the opposite of to love “in word” and “in tongue.”

    Applied to Romeo and Juliet, “truth” can also mean true emotion, true evaluation of one’s own love, true knowledge of one’s lover and true deeds as a result of the love in truth. Romeo falls in love with two girls successively, with elements of truth in both cases and more so in his love for Juliet, which results in a sanctified marriage. However, it is also worth noting that even in his love for Juliet, the truth elements are still insufficient to enable their love to survive and thrive.

    In the opening scene, Romeo is introduced as a young man who is so lovesick for Rosaline that he complains to his cousin Benvolio, “[Sad] hours seem long.” (1.1.166) From this the audience can see Romeo’s true passion and infatuation for Rosaline because they affect his emotions so deep that he even feels the hours he spends without Rosaline are too long and too sad for him to endure.

    However, this love is also blind because Romeo actually sees neither Rosaline as the object of his love, nor his own state of being in love. Rosaline is actually a disciple to Artemis, determined to “live chaste” (1.1.225) and so she will never love back.

    Therefore, Romeo, in his blindness to the true state of Rosaline, is more in love with the idea and feeling of being in love rather than with Rosaline herself. In fact he is not unaware of this blindness.

    He replies to Benvolio’s inquiry of his love for Rosaline, “Alas that love, whose view is muffled still.” (1.1.176) Here the word “muffled” means “blind,” which shows that Romeo is also aware that he has been struck by the arrow of Cupid so that he has fallen in love, knowing nowhere to go.

    So he explains, “This love feel I, that feel no love in this.” (1.1.187) Here the usage of chiasmus emphasizes the emotional confusion and confinement that Romeo is trapped in — as his love has no clear object, and he is more likely to be in love with love itself rather than a true Rosaline, his love journey circles round just as the syntactic structure of the chiasmus line that he utters.

    In addition, as Romeo doesn’t truly know who his love is, he blindly believes that Rosaline is “too fair, too wise, wisely too fair.” (1.1.229) The repetition of the word “too” shows that Romeo is overwhelmed by a near goddess whose beauty and wisdom he falsely believes to have surpassed all.

    Without truly understanding his own love and the object of his love, Romeo’s love for Rosaline is not a love in truth; therefore it isn’t stable, which is proven when he forgets about her as soon as he sees Juliet.

    Romeo’s love for Juliet is much truer than that for Rosaline, as seen in his passionate confession under Juliet’s window.

 

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