Romeo and Juliet: theme, motifs and symbols

Romeo and Juliet is the most famous love story in the English literary tradition. Love is naturally the play’s dominant and most important theme. In this play love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyaltiesand emotions, but this theme is even brutal, powerful emotion that captures individuals and catapults them against their world, and, at times, against themselves. The themes of death and violence permeate Romeo and Juliet, and they are always connected to passion, whether that passion is love or hate. The connection between hate, violence, and death seems obvious. But the connection between love and violence requires further investigation. At the end the decision of the double suicide is  the highest, most potent expression of love that Romeo and Juliet can make. It is only through death that they can preserve their love, and their love is so profound that they are willing to end their lives in its defense. One of the most visual motifs in the play is the contrast between light and dark, often expressed in terms of night/day imagery. Light is not always good and dark is not always evil, but they are used to demonstrate contrasts. 
The Mercutio's description of Queen Mab and her carriage are important because they symbolize the power of fantasies, daydreams and desires. Friar Lawrence remarks that every plant has its own properties and that nothing exists in nature that cannot be put to both good and bad uses. Thus, poison is not intrinsically evil, but it is made letal by humans. The sleeping potion he gives to Juliet is concocted to cause the appearance of death but this potion bring to Romeo's suicide. As this example shows, human beings tend to cause death even without heading to.