Homosexual Motives Through The Romeo and Juliet Love Story

Homosexuals are sprinkled all around the world, despite what some claim, they can be seen even in the ancient times. Some claim Romeo is gay because of the various hints throughout the play, and Shakespear influence. Others say he cannot be gay because of his love for Juliet. Romeo is gay due to his oppressive, baleful childhood, perhaps being the first homosexual character since ancient Greece.

Romeo is gay because he loves Mercutio. Mercutio and Romeo are seen having several interactions across the play, Romeo and Juliet, many of which can be seen to imply a deep connection not fully explored.

Here we see what can almost be considered friendly bickering, something associated widely with old married couples. Romeo being stubborn, as he is, and claiming he doesn’t want to dance and he’s too sad, while Mercutio calls him a baby and says he’s going to because it will make him happy. Mercutio is trying to get Romeo to do something that he thinks will make Romeo happy.

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Then Romeo goes and Does the thing he said, which, if you know Romeo, is very rare. This shows that Romeo listens to Mercutio, and cares what he says and believes they are true, even if he does not show it. However, this can be a very bad thing. For example, take his last words to Romeo, “A plague o' both your houses! // They have made worms' meat of me. I have it, // 70And soundly too. Your houses!”. This shows Mercutio Cursed Romeo.

He hated him, because he was affectionate towards Tybalt. It was Tybalt’s fault Mercutio was angry; It was Tybalt’s fault Mercutio was going to die. So, Romeo killed Tybalt, Romeo killed him without an ounce of mercy. He murdered him without a single regret because he loved Mercutio and everything turned so utterly Wrong, so fast, when he was gone Romeo failed to even Think properly. “ROMEO // This day’s black fate on more days doth depend. // This but begins the woe others must end.” This is the true action in the play that broke Romeo, the reason he was so ready to end it all. This is him, realizing nothing can ever be good again because the person he loves the most is gone. Romeo need Mercutio, he doesn’t want to live in a world without him. Mercutio was Romeo’s stability and when Mercutio left, he became a dead man walking. Romeo is a man of action, and his actions say he loves Mercutio.

Romeo doesn’t love Juliet and is really suppressing his sexuality. Many homosexuals that grow up in heteronormative tend to have suicidal tendencies. Belge supports this when he says, “Young LGBT person who attempts suicide because they would rather be dead than be gay.”Romeo dies because, with Juliet’s death, he realized he was gay, because it didn’t hit him as much as Mercutio’s death did, and he decides death is a better alternative to being gay. He denied this to himself and others right to the end. This is called internalized homophobia, “a self-loathing of someone who is gay,”. It is often the result of being surrounded by homophobia “in popular culture and religion, gays and lesbians often turn that into hatred for themselves.” Romeo was raised as a Roman Catholic, a religion that preaches against homosexuality. In fact, his father figure was a Friar, a priest figure, which means he looks up and wishes to be accepted by a man who thinks homosexuality is a sin. In order for Romeo to feel as if he can be accepted, he has to be straight. This can also be taken as a reason to why Romeo was so quick to say yes to marry Juliet. In his mind, if he was married to a woman, he could use it a way to prove his own straightness. To himself and others. All in all, Romeo’s homophobic upbringings cause him to rush into relationships to hide his sexuality

Romeo is gay because Shakespeare was too. Many homosexuals who grow up in homophobic environments use a coping mechanism called projection. “Projection occurs when a person is unable to manage her/his own internal attributes that s/he may find unacceptable and instead ascribes them to another person.” As Shakespeare is repressing his own homosexual tendencies, he was also projecting them onto Romeo. This is where we see Romeo’s questionable straightness. “The person has taken their own latent, or unseen, psychic conflict and made it manifest by projecting it…”. The reason that Romeo is not obviously gay is because Shakespeare did not originally write him as a homosexual. Instead, Shakespeare was unintentionally writing himself into Romeo, as a coping mechanism from his growing homosexual tendencies. While Shakespeare started addressing letters to his lover in 1609. One can conclude that Shakespeare was suppressing his sexuality. He is also stating, more so to himself than the audience, that if one is gay, they should die when they know it. That is what he made Romeo do, after all. This is showing how growing up surrounded in homophobia, and believing it, can damage a person, leading them to have unhealthy coping mechanisms, such as Shakespeare projecting homosexuality on Romeo.

Some may say that Romeo cannot be gay because he shows clear love for Juliet and other woman. While the phrase “love at first sight” is often used it takes a little more than a few days to fall in love with someone. Emery supports this when she states “We can have lust and passion at first sight, but it takes longer than that to really get to know someone…”. Even if Romeo and Juliet connected, it was not “love” and more likely lust. For Romeo, this is not even true lust, it is fake lust made of a homophobic society. Many gay men get married to women because of the religious and social pressure to be straight. Romeo basically ghost wrote this ok. Romeo’s religion, Roman Catholic, states that he should marry a woman, Juliet provided a perfect chance to be heterosexual. His family and society simply assumed if he was to fall in love with someone it should be a woman. All of these components telling him to go ahead and marry the girl and be straight. Romeo wouldn’t know if he even loved Juliet, but he would marry her to appease those he looks up to.

In conclusion, Romeo is the first gay representation. Although he hid it with his relationship with Juliet and lot of repression, it still shines through from his relationship with Mercutio. Thus, Shakespeare is, albeit accidently, showing there is gay all across the world.