Romeo and Juliet

Content Warning: The source material and guide refer to suicide and violence, including discussions of sexual assault.

Romeo and Juliet is so synonymous with love that the young couple’s names have become bywords for head-over-heels couples. However, this play is as much about love’s illusions, deceptions, and dangers as its beauties.

Every character in the play knows that new love can be “more inconstant than the wind” (I.4.107). Romeo’s rapid flip from believing he will never love anyone the way he loves Rosaline (who wants nothing to do with him) to having eyes for no one but Juliet is emblematic of love’s fickleness. The swiftness with which love can come and go is the least of its dangers, however. Rather, that speed suggests an intensity that borders on violence—something with which the play consistently associates love. Sex can of course be violent, as Sampson and Gregory’s misogynistic boasting about raping the women of the Montague household immediately establishes. However, the opening scene also suggests that love need not be sexual—or even romantic—to be destructive. When Romeo encounters the aftermath of the brawl between Montagues and Capulets, he remarks, “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love” (I.