Shakespeare repeatedly describes Romeo and Juliet’s love using images of light against a dark background — Juliet is “the sun,” a “bright angel” against the night sky, a torch that “teaches the torches to burn bright.” This imagery reinforces how their love feels illuminating and precious specifically because it exists within a dark, feuding world.

Notice, too, how this pattern inverts by the end: their story concludes not at night under stars, but with the literal dark of the tomb — light imagery gives way to images of death and enclosure as the tragedy closes in.