Romeo and Juliet tells the tale of two ‘star-cross’d’ teenage lovers who secretly fall for each other and marry. Their families, the Montagues and Capulets, have been fierce enemies for decades and even as Romeo and Juliet say their wedding vows, new violence breaks out between the clans. In the end, their love is doomed. When Romeo mistakenly believes Juliet is dead, he poisons himself. And, when Juliet discovers that he is dead, she too commits suicide. Romeo and Juliet is by far the most romantic and well known play written back in the 1590s by William Shakespeare. This Elizabethan period was a time when revenge and honour were very important to the society of the rich. It was not uncommon for marriages to be arranged for girls as young as 13 and sword duelling played a large part in seeking honour for your family. The play covers the most dramatic of feelings from the love and passion to the hate and revenge of everyday life ending in the ultimate tragedy that breaks hearts all over the world.
The famous couple originated from an old Italian story more than a century before Shakespeare tackled it making it the perfect story to immortalise in writing as it contained a powerful love story. It was, therefore, set in Verona, Italy, as Shakespeare felt it belonged there and he’d used the setting before for the 1594 play, ‘Gentlemen of Verona’.
The title assignment will be discovered using an in-depth study of both scenes 1 and 2 in act 3 where by comparing and contrasting them, while using references from the rest of the play, it should be evident of the differences and similarities between them.
Act 3 scene 1 is the turning point of the play because this is when two main characters are killed off, Mercutio and Tybalt. It makes the play instantly focus on Romeo and Juliet more by lessening the amount of characters. This is also a pivotal scene for Romeo because he gets banished, after slaying Tybalt, and taken away from his wife. If this scene hadn’t happened, Romeo might have known Juliet took only a sleeping potion so maybe the tragedy could have been avoided. However due his murder he does get taken away to Mantua and so Juliet has to suffer the consequences as well as himself. They both feel the strain of being apart and even Romeo’s family must suffer in his absence. Yet this fight that caused his banishment could easily have been prevented if Mercutio had first listened to the instinct of his friend, Benvolio.
As Act 3 scene 1 starts, Benvolio is extremely nervous as he and Mercutio are out late and he can almost foresee a fight with the Capulets as proven when he says, ‘The day is hot’ and ‘the mad blood stirring’. He is predicting that something bad will happen as in the very first scene in the play when there is a big public fight between both families in the street. He uses the saying ‘fee-simple’ which means that if he quarrelled as much as Mercutio, he wouldn’t last long which was a warning against Mercutio and also a prophecy into what his argumentative side would get him into if he didn’t control it. ‘Let’s retire’ is a sign of Benvolio’s nerves. He wants to leave the street behind yet Mercutio uses humour to deflect the whines of Benvolio. He uses six reasons as to why people would fight for instance ‘having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes’. It was used to calm Benvolio down and it’s very ingenious the way Shakespeare managed to get this across. This scene contains extreme irony as we know that Benvolio isn’t a fighter so what Mercutio is really doing is winding him up.
Soon after Tybalt enters the scene and this causes a great change of atmosphere which becomes much tenser, adding to the dramatic effect of this play. Tybalt and Mercutio create a lot of banter here. They insult eachother and use the same verbal abuse that was used by Tybalt in Act 1 scene 5 when he discovered Romeo in the Capulet ball. ‘Thou art a villain’ and ‘boy’ are two of the strongest insults used. Then a sword fight occurs between Mercutio and Tybalt and when Romeo notices this he struggles to part them both, because this scene follows the marriage between Romeo and Juliet, Tybalt is his cousin. The sword fight is powerful because of the way you can almost choreograph a stage fight and the fact that it is very exciting to watch and discover the outcome. It also means that it can give time for Mercutio to utter his last words before death which is also dramatic due to his humour during his final moments. He lightens the mood with his jokes and relaxes the audience before almost instantly destroying the happiness with his curse on both houses. ‘I am hurt. A plague o’ both your houses!’ The plague was repeated three times and was even said between a joke at first so no-one believed him. He makes it worse by placing all blame on the unsuspecting Romeo which makes him feel extremely guilty and also causes Romeo to change from a loving, peace-keeping character to an angry, revenge needing character. ‘Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm’ the sentence that caused Romeo’s downfall.
When Mercutio dies, Romeo becomes very aggressive which is a surprise as he had been pleading for peace only minutes before. He blames Juliet for wanting peace in his fury, ‘O sweet Juliet, thy beauty hath made me effeminate and in my temper soften’d valour’s steel!’ and suddenly becomes very angry and in want of revenge against Tybalt. He feels tremendously guilty for Mercutio and because of this, Romeo is thrown into revenge even more than he intended to be. He feels that if he harms or even kills Tybalt, it will make up for the pain he caused his best friend. He is, therefore, driven strongly to hat Tybalt even though they are cousins, ‘Tybalt, that an hour hath been my kinsman’. Romeo also wants to accompany Mercutio on his way to paradise either with himself or with Tybalt and he wouldn’t stop feeling guilty until that happened.
‘Mercutio’s soul is but a little way above our heads staying for thine to keep him company: either thou, or I, or both, must go with him’. Back in the 16th century, when this play was first written, it was very important , and sometimes this is relevant to todays society, for men to show honour for themselves and their families. They showed this back then by fighting and occasionally even dying was seen as the greatest honour. However in Romeo’s case, although he is fighting in revenge for his friend, he is casting doom onto his family for killing someone who had nothing to do with him. That is why he gets banished. If he showed his face around Verona after the murder, he would have no respect from anybody, which would rebound onto his new wife, Juliet. I feel sorry for Romeo at this point as he has been totally taken over by hate and revenge that he doesn’t think straight. As he says, ‘O, I am fortune’s fool’ although I am not superstitious, I feel he was a fool only by his own feelings, especially as he was torn between his love for Juliet and his guilt for causing Mercutio’s death.
So Tybalt is slain by Romeo in a sword fight. Romeo blaims the stars and his destiny for murdering Tybalt by shouting, ‘O, I am fortune’s fool’. We use this scene to learn that Romeo’s speech is exceptionally exaggerated. He uses words such as, ‘Tybalt the reason that I have to love thee’ and ‘I never injured thee but love thee better than thou canst devise’. He’s a very love-stricken man that gets everyone into trouble while trying to keep the peace. He wants to have everyone happy yet causes all the trouble. If he just left things alone things might have gone better.
Later on when Benvolio and Lady Capulet describe the events to the Prince, both stories vary considerably. Benvolio told a much truer version of events including the details of the fights. Yet Lady Capulet being biased, sees only the bad in Romeo and only the good and honourable in the Capulets. Having Benvolio as a narrator really gives depth to this scene.
In complete contrast to the first scene in act 3, Juliet’s soliloquy is much calmer and is used to settle the audience and focuse them back to the main love between Romeo and Juliet. It is a very private scene where Juliet is alone in her bedroom expressing all of her inner thoughts and feelings. If this was done on stage, Juliet would most likely be near the front to create an intimacy with the audience because it really does reveal everything Juliet feels about consummating her marriage to Romeo. It shows, at first, how impatient she is to see him after so long. She uses words such as ‘gallop’ and ‘immediately’ to rush the day along as the night will bring privacy and her beloved Romeo. She wants is to be a ‘cloudy night’ with a ‘close curtain’ to protect her and Romeo from everyone as they have a secret relationship. She is also feeling passionate at this point because she knows how special it will be and that it is the final at together to show how much they really do love eachother. This scene is all about love which is repeatedly proven throughout it which contrasts greatly to the previous scene which brings together only hate, revenge and honour. She sums up her feelings by calling it a ‘love-performing Night’.
Soon after this she has a sudden change of mood. After being incredibly impatient and passionate she then says, ‘Come civil Night, thou sober-suited matron all in black and learn me how to lose a wining match’ which is a metaphor for someone to reassure her. This brings across, to me, a slight sense of panic, also shown by her repeated use of the word ‘come’, yet she quickly conceals it. Because she says this it brings across a feeling of anxiousness and worry. She doesn’t have a mother figure to turn to as even the Nurse isn’t with her during the soliloquy. This is an important night as it’s the night that will take her from childhood to adulthood which is extremely difficult to do alone so I feel for her and am surprised by how mature she is acting for a 13 year old girl. ‘Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks’ this is a description of a blush. She becomes embarrassed and a little shy about the whole idea as the next line is a reassurance to herself, ’till strange love grow bold’ as though she is acting as a mother-figure to herself. As that is showing her inexperience, she hopes she will improve in time. She states earlier they are ‘a pair of stainless maidenhoods’ which means neither have done this before which could explain Juliet’s many different emotions during this monologue.
After this Juliet finds herself thinking about Romeo and really makes him seem like a God. This is the hyperbole Shakespeare uses for this scene. She compares him to be the white snow on a raven’s back which is a sign of innocence making it dramatic irony as it hasn’t been long since Romeo murdered Tybalt but obviously this isn’t known to Juliet. She really exaggerates his qualities and this is evident when she says ‘when I shall die take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so fine’. This quote is however is also quite sad and ironic as she does die soon after and so does Romeo. She is unbelievably overwhelmed by love in this paragraph and seems to put Romeo on a pedestal high above anyone else in the world.
It’s not long before she is changing her feeling again but this time to apprehension and repeated emotions of impatience, expressed with words like ‘tedious’. She uses a strong metaphor of having ‘bought the mansion of love, but not possessed it’ which is her explaining how she has married her love but hasn’t yet enjoyed the consummation. I find this appearance of the physical aspect of marriage immature as they have more important relationship issues to deal with as they barely know eachother yet this is a 21st century look on the idea and this concept was seen as standard in the 16th century. However this is all forgotten when she reminds us that she is only young by talking of ‘an impatient child that hath new robes and may not wear them’. Referring to a child makes us realize that Juliet herself is only 13 and dealing alone with adulthood. The audience to this scene would feel great pity for Juliet and they would feel totally sympathetic towards them, unlike Romeo for which they would be unimpressed by his actions.
I can’t help but find this scene extremely powerful and I couldn’t even begin to imagine myself in her position.
As I hope to have proven, these two scenes could not include more differences. Act 3 scene 1 is a fast paced scene of action whereas the following scene is slower and creates intimacy rather than hate and anger, however, they both contain the same amount of effectiveness. The similarity they share is the irony used. Humour and changes of atmosphere and mood are used well in both scenes. Shakespeare was clever in using all the dramatic devices that he did in one play without exaggerating it too much. From murders to marriages and from love to hate, this play is full of all the effectiveness needed.
