Shakespeare's greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet, deals principally with love, or more specifically, the price of love. Unfortunately, for Romeo and Juliet, the price is death. Shakespeare employs Language, Symbols and Characterisation to express the themes of love and death featured prominently in Romeo & Juliet.

The idea of courtly love is introduced when Romeo appears sad and melancholy, "Ay me! Sad hours seem long," and who is infatuated with Rosaline, a woman of higher social status, who rejects his advances and remains aloof: "Out of her favour where I am in love." Franco Zeffirelli's film adaptation of the play represents Romeo as a courtly lover, with Romeo arriving on the set holding flowers, sighing on numerous occasions and by the original eloquent and sorrowful speech of the play. This dialect Shakespeare applies is the elaborate language of Petrarchan poetry and the use of imagery...