Romeo's behavior changes significantly after he meets Juliet at the Capulet estate. How does he act differently after their encounter, and what...

Before he
meetsat the Capulet party,is miserable, introspective, and confused. He is this way because he
is in love with a girl called Rosaline, who does not reciprocate his feelings. Romeo's father
says that Romeo's mood at the beginning of the play is "black and portentous" and that
Romeo locks himself in his room, "shuts up his windows, locks fair daylight out / And makes
himself an artificial night." When we first meet Romeo, he talks in riddles and paradoxes:
"O heavy lightness . . . Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health." Such
language points to his misery and also his confusion. Feathers, for example, usually connote
flight and freedom, but for Romeo they are made of lead, implying that he feels weighed down,
trapped.

After he meets Juliet, he forgets all about Rosaline, and he becomes
happy and excitable. When Juliet asks him, for example, how he overcame the wall surrounding the
orchard, Romeo replies, "With loves light wings did I oerperch these walls. / For stony
limits cannot hold love out." Whereas before he met Juliet, Romeo felt weighed down and
trapped, now he feels free. He was a pessimist, and now he is an optimist. Arguably, the only
difference between Romeo's love for Juliet and Romeo's love for Rosaline is that his love for
Juliet is reciprocated, whereas his love for Rosaline was not. Nonetheless, the fact that Juliet
loves Romeo gives him, metaphorically speaking, the "wings" to rise from his previous
misery.