Romeo and Juliet Act I-III Paragraph
In William Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, one can clearly see that love causes violence between the characters. Love can overwhelm a person as powerfully and completely as hate can. The passionate love between Romeo and Juliet begins when Tybalt catches Romeo crashing the Capulet party and chases him out the door. This is when Romeo and Juliet catch each other’s eye, and instantly fall in love. Once Juliet finds out whom the mystery man was she says “I must love a loathed enemy” [I.V.142]. She knows that neither her mother nor father will approve of the hated Montague, so she and the nurse are going to keep it a secret. From that point on, love seems to push the lover’s closer to love and violence, not farther from it. Both Romeo and Juliet are plagued with thoughts of suicide, and the willingness to experience it. In Act 3, scene 3, Romeo pulls out a knife in Friar Laurence’s cell and threatens to kill himself after he has been banished from Verona and his love due to the fact he killed Tybalt. After Capulet decides that Juliet will marry Paris, Juliet says, “if all else fail, myself have power to die” [III.v.242] In front of the Friar, Juliet says, “and with this knife” [IV.i.54] I would rather kill myself than marry Paris and live without her dear Romeo. Finally, each imagines that “[one’s] dead in the bottom of a tomb” [III.V.56] after the morning of their first, and only sexual experience. Suicide is the