What is Friar Laurence saying about love in Act 2? What metaphor is he using to make his point?Now Romeo and Juliet want to go to him to perform...

In Act II, scene III, the Friar is shocked by Romeo’s
sudden change of heart. The scene involves several figures of speech, including
metaphors and other figures of speech.

After watching Romeo
pine for Rosaline for so long, he finds it incomprehensible that the young man now
claims to love another girl. “Is Rosaline, whom thou didst love so dear,/So
soon forsaken?” (ll 66-67). If so, he continues, then young men love only
with their eyes (lust), and not their hearts (genuine
love).

He goes on to note that Romeo has shed
innumerable tears (“brine”, “saltwater” =
tears) for Rosaline, apparently for no reward: “How much salt water was thrown
away in waste, To season love, that of it doth not taste!” (71-72). Here,
Romeo’s tears are compared to salt that a person would use to season a dish of food—in
this case the dish of food is Rosaline. Why go to all the trouble of seasoning the food,
the Friar argues, that you are not going to “taste”?

In the
same tone of surprise and rebuke, the Friar says that Romeo’s sorrow was so heavy that
his sighs still fog the air, and that Romeo’s “old groans” still ring in his ears. He
even states that he can still see the stain of a tear on Romeo’s face that is so fresh
that it has not been washed off: all of which would seem proof of his purported love for
Rosaline.

Now the Friar comes to the heart of his argument:
if Romeo was being himself and speaking truly, his terrible sadness was caused by his
unrequited love for Rosaline. So how could it possibly vanish so quickly?
If what Romeo is telling the Friar is true, the Friar has a lesson for
him, which he demands Romeo repeat: “Pronounce this sentence then:/Women may
fall when there’s no strength in men” (79-81). Most of us would agree that
one cannot expect loyalty from women when men are as fickle as
Romeo.

Romeo argues that the Friar had often scolded him
for loving Rosaline, but this strategy won’t work either. The Friar corrects Romeo,
clarifying that he only scolded Romeo for “doting” on Rosaline (having a one-sided
crush; being obsessed with her), not for loving her
genuinely.

Still Romeo tries to argue that the Friar had
told him to “bury” his love for Rosaline. The Friar responds with another metaphor:
“Not in a grave to lay one in, another out to have” (83-84)—not to
simply cast aside one love and replace it with another. Romeo then tries to convince the
Friar that Juliet is different from Rosaline, in that she actually returns his love,
while Rosaline did not.

Here, the Friar again corrects
Romeo, defending Rosaline’s perceptiveness: “She knew well/ Thy love did read
by rote, which could not spell” (87-88). In perhaps his most difficult
metaphor, the Friar compares Romeo’s love for Rosaline to a student who can read from
memory (“by rote”), but has no understanding of what he was reading (one who cannot
spell). In other words, Rosaline knew that Romeo’s “love” was simply infatuation, and
not the real thing.

It is perplexing, then, that the Friar
suddenly has a change of heart, and decides to marry the two. Apparently, the prospect
of uniting the feuding families through this marriage must have entered his mind with
such force that it cast all of his doubts away—at least for the time
being.