Comparing the Love Scenes - Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing.

Comparing the Love Scenes

Introduction

William Shakespeare was noted for his marvellous works in making plays such as Much Ado about Nothing and Romeo and Juliet. It is these two plays that will be analysed, comparing the love scenes, and showing how women, love, power and marriage in the time of Shakespeare, as his plays have a reflection on some aspects of the culture at his time.

Romeo and Juliet

In Romeo and Juliet, the lovers which were Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, had a secret, albeit forbidden relationship, due to their families in an ongoing feud with each other. Juliet, at the young age of 13, was pressured, and eventually commanded to (or else she would be disowned), marry Count Paris. This shows that around the time of Shakespeare, parents could 'make' their daughter, even at young ages, marry a man even if they didn't want to.

When Romeo and Juliet first glanced eyes on one another, fell in love and got married, showed how Juliet, defied her father's wishes for her to marry someone.

Mass-produced colour photolithography on paper for...

English: Title page of the second quarto edition (...

Charlotte and Susan Cushman (the Cushman sisters) ...

That he had chose for whatever reason. This showed that women were, at the time of Shakespeare, moving from a male dominated system, to a system where females were becoming self-dependant on their choices, showed when she chose Romeo over Prince Paris.

As Capulet discovered the body of Juliet (when she faked her death) her father calls it as having it 'deflowered' his daughter. Deflowered can be taken in two definitions as dictated in the dictionary:

1. To take away the virginity of (a woman).

2. To destroy the innocence, integrity, or beauty of; ravage.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.