What does William Shakespeare want us to understand about Romeo and Juliet?

Answer 1

Lots of stuff. If we didn't understand the nature of Romeo and Juliet's personalities, choices, relationship and general situation, we could not understand the play. For example, it is important to understand about Juliet that she has never left her house except to go to church and has no idea of how to maintain herself in the outside world. If she were Rosalind from As You Like It she would pack her bags and go with Romeo to Mantua. She would laugh at her father's threat to cut her off without a penny. But Juliet is very young (Shakespeare made her a younger woman than his sources did) and really cannot take care of herself. That's important to understand her behaviour. There are a myriad other things Shakespeare tells us about these characters to make their story make some kind of sense.

Answer 2

In so many different ways, it is difficult to count. Love is a main theme in many of the sonnets, especially the glorious 116, where love is proclaimed as an eternal principle. It is also a major theme in most of the plays, where it is dealt with superficially (Love's Labour's Lost), playfully (As You Like It), sneakily (All's Well that Ends Well), magically (A Midsummer Night's Dream), politically (Henry V), nightmarishly (Othello), remorsefully (A Winter's Tale), bawdily (Henry IV) and manipulatively (Macbeth). He deals not only with the love between men and women, but also with the love between men and their close male friends (The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Two Noble Kinsmen, Sonnets), between women and their female friends (All's Well, As You Like It), love of parents by children (King Lear, Hamlet, Coriolanus), love of children by parents (King John), and even the love of country (Julius Caesar).

Answer 3

In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare conveys that love will go beyond the sands of time. Shakespeare is trying to show that love between two lovers will still exist even when they are long gone.