Till death do us part… In a few daysBefore the 19th century, love and marriage were often considered separate concepts. Marriage was strictly about running a business while love was a pursuit outside of marriage. During the Renaissance, “ideal” love was a purifying and noble experience. There were two necessary outcomes for love to be considered ideal: there could only be a union of hearts, minds, and soul, not bodies; and unrequited desire was to lead to the ennoblement of the lover. William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet can be read as a satire on courtly love rather than a tragic love story celebrating it. Indeed, Shakespeare mocks “ideal” conventions of beauty, suggests that courtly love is not really love, and uses irony to exaggerate its effects. In Act 1, Scene 5, sixteen-year-old Romeo Montague is at the Capulet house when he poses for the first time. eyes turned towards Juliet Capulet, thirteen years old. He asks: “Has my heart loved until now? Give it up, sight, for I never saw true beauty before this sight” (1.5.50-51). Romeo has completely forgotten his former crush Rosaline and has fallen in love with Juliet. This scene can be considered Petrarchan because, as in Petcharch's sonnets to his beloved Laura, Romeo idealizes Juliet through metaphors and similes. Romeo describes Juliet as "a snowy dove surrounded by ravens / As the young lady shows on her comrades" (1.5. 45-6), meaning that she outshines the other women like a white dove in the midst of a flock of crows. In Sonnet 130, another work of Shakespeare, he ridicules these Petrarchan clichés which idealize women beyond all comparison. In his sonnet he states, “I think my love is as rare/As any other that she belied with false simile” (13-14). He basically says that he... middle of paper ......conclusion, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet turned out to be a satire of the conventions of courtly love as opposed to a romantic tragedy that celebrates love courteous. It is not surprising that Shakespeare's mockery of courtly love in sonnet 130 is also present in this play. Romeo's Petrarchan words that idealize Juliet ultimately make Juliet realize how irrational Romeo is. Following the book (following the conventions of courtly love), Romeo emphasizes how courtly loves are just love for the idea of ​​being in love rather than actual love. The courtly love in this play is never seen as a cleansing and noble experience because, ironically, this adolescent adventure resulted in more deaths than the number of days Romeo and Juliet were together.BibliographyShakespeare, William . Romeo and Juliet. 57-119.Shakespeare, William. Sonnet 130. 11.