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The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, is a story of two young lovers who, upon first seeing one another, become totally star-crossed and infatuated. I think that the most interesting character in this play is Romeo, A sixteen-year-old Montague who falls in love with the only daughter of his family’s greatest enemy, Lord Capulet. After reading or watching the entire play, a reader/observer can easily see how very love-struck, hysterical, and drastic Romeo is.

Romeo knew from the very moment that he saw Juliet that that was the girl for him. Needless to say just hours before seeing Juliet he was just as infatuated with Rosaline, who was completely disinterested in Romeo. Romeo tends to take love way too seriously. The only things that were on his mind throughout the entire play were how to get Rosaline to like him and his love for Juliet. Whenever Mercutio, a good friend of Romeo’s, would tease Romeo about his many infatuations with women, Romeo would just deny it or think nothing of it. Act 2 scene 1 is a good example of Romeo’s dodging Mercutio and his cousin Benvolio’s teasing him about taking love so seriously. Romeo is so obsessed with Juliet that, near the end of the play when Romeo thinks that Juliet has died, he decides he can’t live without her and kills himself.

Romeo is fairly calm during the events of the play up until the point where he is banished for avenging Mercutio’s death and killing Tybalt. At that point in the play Romeo loses his ability to think clearly and becomes completely hysterical. If Friar John had not helped Romeo to regain his sanity he might have just gone and killed himself right then. Of course, he did not get much better after hearing from his servant, Balthasar, that back in Verona Juliet had killed herself (Juliet was not really dead, but in a controlled coma brought about by the Friar’s elixir). At that point Romeo lost all contact with reality. He came back to Verona without...