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When Juliet is disowned for defying the social norms , Shakespeare shows the impact of family conflict in Renaissance culture Tybalt enters with a group of cronies. He approaches Benvolio and Mercutio and asks to speak with one of them. Annoyed, Mercutio begins to taunt and provoke him. Here, the chorus tells the audience the outcome of events to build dramatic irony and create tension As a prologue to the play, the Chorus enters. In a fourteen-line sonnet, the Chorus describes two noble households (called “houses”) in the city of Verona. The houses hold an “ancient grudge” (Prologue.2) against each other that remains a source of violent and bloody conflict. The Chorus states that from these two houses, two “star-crossed” (Prologue.6) lovers will appear. These lovers will mend the quarrel between their families by dying. The story of these two lovers, and of the terrible strife between their families, will be the topic of this play.
A predominant belief was that human lives were predetermined and affected by decisions made by the gods, stars and planets Shakespeare situates this maturation directly after Juliet’s wedding night, linking the idea of development from childhood to adulthood with sexual experience. Indeed, Juliet feels so strong that she defies her father, but in that action she learns the limit of her power. Strong as she might be, Juliet is still a woman in a male-dominated world. One might think that Juliet should just take her father up on his offer to disown her and go to live with Romeo in Mantua. That is not an option. Juliet, as a woman, cannot leave society; and her father has the right to make her do as he wishes. Though defeated by her father, Juliet does not revert to being a little girl. She recognizes the limits of her power and, if another way cannot be found, determines to use it: for a woman in Verona who cannot control the direction of her life, suicide, the brute ability to live or not live that life, can represent the only means of asserting authority over the self. The nurse serves as comedic relief in the play as a b awdy and unsophisticated character, representing the class divisions of the time Juliet’s rhetorical question in this soliloquy asks Elizabethan audiences to challenge values about family honour Shortly after discussing the f eud , Romeo confides in Benvolio about his deep thoughts that love is painful and difficultShakespeare shows Lord Capulet referring to the importance of Juliet’s marriage when he calls her the “hopeful lady of my earth”
Thus Shakespeare uses emotive language to associate it with the theme of love to demonstrate Romeo’s love/feelings for Juliet and to create drama. Thus one can undoubtedly say that ‘Romeo and Juliet’ provides an insight into the use of poetic devices. The vast majority of Elizabethans would have been Christian, and the Church played a central role in a family’s life The lines spoken by Romeo are taken from Act I Scene V when Romeo happens to see Juliet for the first time in the party hosted by the Capulets. Both Romeo and Juliet do not know each other.
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In Act I, Scene V, Tybalt foreshadows further conflict by showing his bitterness towards Romeo, his enemy In the Prologue , the c horus describes a feud , where “civil blood makes civil hands unclean”, connoting the impurity of violence Juliet speaks this line at the Capulet ball when she is told by her nurse that Romeo is a Montague and therefore her enemy In the final scene, the Prince declares that all of the towns is punished: “See what a scourge is laid upon your hate”
Having slipped away from his friends, Romeo lingers in Capulet s garden under Juliet’s window, and overhears her confess to the stars that she loves him. He reveals his presence to her, and in an ardent love scene, they resolve to be married secretly. The next day, Juliet sends her nurse, of whom she has made a confidante, to make final arrangements, and the wedding is performed at the cell of Friar Laurence, Romeo’s friend. The two lovers depart hoping to meet each other in Juliet’s chamber that night.Shakespeare sets his play in Verona, Italy, perhaps to create Ambiguity and distance between the parallels of the Capulet and Montague feud and the one raging in England between Catholics and Protestants Mercutio, neither a Montague nor a Capulet, is killed in the feud, alluding to the deaths of innocent bystanders in the name of family honour Act 3, scene 4 Paris again approaches Capulet about marrying Juliet. Capulet, saying that Juliet will do as she is told, promises Paris that she will marry him in three days. Lady Capulet tells Juliet about Capulet’s plan for her to marry Paris on Thursday, explaining that he wishes to make her happy. Juliet is appalled. She rejects the match, saying “I will not marry yet; and when I do, I swear / It shall be Romeo—whom you know I hate— / Rather than Paris” (3.5.121–123). Capulet enters the chamber. When he learns of Juliet’s determination to defy him, he becomes enraged and threatens to disown Juliet if she refuses to obey him. When Juliet entreats her mother to intercede, her mother denies her help. The Prologue dooms the “star-cross’d lovers”, asking audiences to watch events unfold and question the role of fate in the tragedy
Shakespeare acquired substantial wealth thanks to his acting and writing abilities, and his shares in London theatres. The going rate was ï¿&fraq12;10 per play at the turn of the sixteenth century. So how much money did Shakespeare make? Read on...This time, he shouts his frustration at Fate’s decision to make him “Fortune’s fool”, again implying he has little a utonomy over his life Romeo and Juliet would have been performed for Queen Elizabeth I during the wars between the Catholic and Protestant religions Elizabethan audiences would understand the sacrifice Juliet makes when she denies a secure and honourable future with Paris The obvious function of the Prologue as an introduction to the Verona of Romeo and Juliet can obscure its deeper, more important function. The Prologue does not merely set the scene of Romeo and Juliet, it tells the audience exactly what is going to happen in the play. The Prologue refers to an ill-fated couple with its use of the word “star-crossed,” which means, literally, against the stars. Stars were thought to control people’s destinies. But the Prologue itself creates this sense of fate by providing the audience with the knowledge that Romeo and Juliet will die even before the play has begun. The audience therefore watches the play with the expectation that it must fulfill the terms set in the Prologue. The structure of the play itself is the fate from which Romeo and Juliet cannot escape. The play is interesting from a generic point of view: some critics have theorized that the young Shakespeare was still learning his tragic craft, and the play, with its neatly opposed noble houses, lyrical verse and overbearing concern with love, could easily turn into a comedy. Shakespeare tightens everything and ratchets up the tension using pretty much all of the available means: he makes the lovers even younger than they are in his primary source, ( The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, a 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke), he compresses the action of the play down to a few days, and kills off the play’s (and probably his) greatest comedian, Mercutio, at the start of the third act. In so doing, he creates an imperfect tragedy, but one that captures the essence of youth, and, indeed, first love. Romeo and Juliet is fast, furious, and a testament to the fragility of love in a volatile social sphere.
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