Benvolio Montague
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Romeo
Quote 4
BENVOLIO
Why Romeo, art thou mad?
ROMEO
Not mad, but bound more than a madman is,
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipped and tormented and good e'en, good
fellow.
(1.2.56-60)
Does this sound a little cliché? It did in the sixteenth century, too. When Romeo talks about his love for Rosaline, he acts and sounds like a typical "Petrarchan lover," one who is "imprisoned" and tormented" by his unrequited love for an unavailable woman. Petrarch, by the way, was a fourteenth-century Italian poet whose sonnets were all the rage in Renaissance England. Much of Petrarch's love poetry was written about "Laura," a figure as unavailable and unattainable as Romeo's.