Romeo's love for Rosaline, as extravagantly performed in the early moments of the play, is really a kind of parody of Petrarchism, a deliberate onstage caricature of the sonnet-writing, lovesick, moon-struck lover who places his lady on a pedestal, and is really in love either with the idea of love or, even more acutely, with the idea of himself as a lover.
