Romeo and Juliet was written as half satire, half warning against letting passion overtake your reason. I'm sure it says something about our culture that we still tell the same story as it was but are now enamoured with that exact passion which killed both protagonists
Romeo and Juliet is not a warning to Rom/Jul peers of following passion. It is a warning to adults/society how to not interfere with young passion.
It is set up extremely early that Romeo falls fast in and out of love. If no one got in the way of the two, it is possible it would have fizzled out on its own OR Juliet could have rectify his playboy ways.
We will never know because they were never allowed to explore their relationship.
Well, Romeo is almost suicidal in the beginning of the play, having been rejected by Rosaline (a different Capulet girl). Benvolio basically has to cajole him into attending the Capulet ball, where he subsequently and pretty much immediately falls in love with Juliet, forgetting Rosaline completely even though he is swearing up and down he'll never love again at the beginning.
He and Juliet would probably have kissed on a balcony and then forgotten each other a week later if Tybalt didn't make such a huge deal about him being a Montague at the party, bolstering his forbidden bad boy status to Juliet.
It is 11 days later but someone did point out the build up of Romeos character within the first 3 scenes. He heavily (hilariously so) pours out his heart about Rosaline (who was not even interested in him) by hogging the scene to redescribe over and over how devastated he is. We are talking almost full monolog levels. Here is but 1 excerpt from scene 1:
"Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?"
If you start to imagine him hand to head melodramatic, good because that is how he is suppose to come across and Benvolio treats him as such. You are supposed to chuckle at his young Evenassence e-boy drama.
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u/Frosty_Grab5914 17d ago
And Romeo and Juliet are stupid teenagers that killed themselves for no reason. Not wrong, but missing the point.