I am positive Juliet loved Romeo, and it would seem that Shakespeare is suggesting Romeo loves her. In truth, whether you think the love is plausible or not is really missing the point of the play. The central focus of the play is the sacrifical death of the two lovers, because of their parents' and societies inability to allow them to openly love each other. The old Patriarchs are too preoccupied with their battle, and Tybalt is too preoccupied with his desire to perpetuate Capulet's war, to enable a space to created where the two lovers can openly express their feelings, both physically and spiritually.
The only time, actually, the lovers can actually be full with each other, is, ironically, the time right before Romeo must go and never see Juliet alive again. The space contained within the night before dawn, and embodied in the song of the Nightingale, an old symbol, gesturing back to Ovid's Philomela, is the one moment when love, for a brief period, while the battle sleeps, can find its inviolable fullness. This image later is taken up by Keats in his Ode to a Nightingale, but the idea is ancient. The restrictions of everyday life finally are removed, in a sphere where love can briefly flourish, and the two lovers can be together.
Unsurprisingly, it is also this moment that the central image of the poem, as Frye remarked in his essay on Romeo and Juliet (I'm not sure exactly where he got the notion) the central imagery begins to pertain towards gunpowder. The illusion of the existence of the space, is suddenly complete jeopardized, and waiting to explode. That is the centre of the poem. That the grotesqueness of these two Patriarchs, and the whole of Verona, leads to these lovers to take their lives. Because of their inability to allow their children's love to flourish, the only choice really, is death. Fulfillment cannot be gained without it.
I know, someone along here I seem to have crossed Shakespeare with Wagner, but I think the message is somewhat fundamental to the constructs of society up until this very day. I think, to get back to the question, that that is a naive reading, built mainly from a misreading of scholarship that tries to focus too heavily on character analysis. In general, the words and the actions, according to the conventions of drama at the time, seem all to suggest the two lovers truly love each other. In fact, love back then was perceived as something more physical than it is today, and seems far more optimistic. I think some critics, however, tend to focus too heavily on character, and miss the central point of the story, by removing the idea that Romeo truly loves Juliet. I am, without a doubt, certain that the play makes it perfectly clear Juliet loves Romeo. And I am almost as certain the play makes it clear Romeo returns that love. All the highschool constructed readings of viewing the lovers as "teenagers" (a concept non-existent in Shakespeare's time) or as too young to love is rather silly. In truth, the play, especially focusing on Juliet, who is one of the greatest creations of Shakespeare, seems to suggest a sort of coming of age narrative as well. Juliet, before sheltered and subject to her parent's wishes reaches the age where she has a sexual awakening, and breaks from the zone of control her parents enforced. The progress of the characters show that she is fully capable of making rational decisions, and is very much in love, and mature for her age. I think the best lines to support this would be her famous:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
Those aren't the lines of a child - she is fully conscious of what she is saying, and she is fully conscious of the notion that Romeo returns the love.
Reply With Quote
O and I've called Juliete a whore. 
No really, Romeo was just lady-man and Juliete to naive little girl. Moral (not what Shakespeare wanted to say, but what I've learnt): You can't loose you head because of love ( or lust, no matter). Love isn't a constant thing. It changes many time in life ( expecially unrequited love) . R&J love isn't something speciall. Them feelings were selfish. Love is a selfish little thing. That's why they fighted so much over it. They fought for 5 minutes happiness, because they were stuborn and because they held them opinions more right then them perents. Juliete believed in Romeo, about Romeo, I don't know, strange things happens to him...
I can only say, that I found Rosaline the most atractive of them all.
Originally Posted by Romiet
