Romeo Character Summary

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Character summary and analysis of Romeo The name Romeo has become nearly synonymous with “lover”, due to his experiences in Romeo and Juliet. The power of Romeo’s love, however, often obscures a clear vision of Romeo’s character, which is actually far more complex. In fact, Romeo’s relation to love isn’t that simple. At the beginning of the play, Romeo is in love with Rosaline, claiming her paragon of women, and is miserable at her indifference towards him. Romeo is a great reader of love poetry, and from the beginning we could see that his portrayal of love for Rosaline seemed that he was trying to act out what he had read about. When Juliet first meets him, she says that he ‘kisses by th’ book’, meaning that he kisses by the rules. This shows that Romeo’s kiss is proficient but lacks originality, and this is also reflected upon by his personality. When Romeo meets Juliet, Rosaline instantly vanishes from his mine, and in fact Juliet is far more than just a replacement; Romeo’s love for her is far deeper, more authentic and unique than the clichéd puppy love for Rosaline. Romeo’s love matures in course of the play, from a shallow desire to intense, profound passion. Juliet’s sensible observations, such as the one about Romeo’s kissing, seems just the thing to snap Romeo from his superficial idea of love and to inspire him to begin to speak some of the most beautiful and intense love poetry ever written. Romeo’s deep capacity of love is only a mere part in his larger capacity of all intense feelings of different kinds. This shows that Romeo lacks the capacity for emotional moderation. His extreme feelings dominate his character throughout the play. Love compels him to risk his life in sneaking into the enemies’ territory just to catch a glimpse of Juliet. Anger compels him to engage in a reckless duel and kill his wife’s cousin in revenge for his friend. Despair
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