William Shakespeare was born in 1564. Elizabeth I was the queen at this time. He was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon. He went to the local grammar school, but did not go to university. When he was 20, he moved to London and became a playwright and an actor. In about 1603, he ‘retired’ from acting and being a playwright and returned to Stratford. He was very rich by this time and bought the biggest house in the town. He finally died in 1616.
Romeo and Juliet is a play where two families (The Montague’s and the Capulet’s) don’t like each other. Romeo meets Juliet and they fall in love. They marry in secrecy, Romeo kills someone and is banished from the city. At this news, Juliet takes a sleeping potion that gives the belief that she is dead. Romeo gets a message saying Juliet is dead, so Romeo has to go and see her. Because of the thought of life without Juliet, Romeo also takes a potion, but his is a potion that will kill him. When Juliet comes round and sees Romeo dead, she kills herself.
At the time Romeo and Juliet was written, Shakespeare had mostly written mostly comedies and had only written one tragedy. This probably means that the audience were probably expecting a comedy rather than a tragedy. I think that in those day’s, people went to plays because of the reputation of the writer. In modern times, people know what to expect like a comedy character in Mercutio and a villain in Tybalt, and they know that people are going to die. People go to the plays because of the reputation of the Author and the culture.
I think that conflict is a central part of the play because it is a tragedy. The reason I think this is because there would need to be some conflict because people are going to die. Also, the conflict helps emphases the hatred between the two families. When Romeo kills Paris at the end, it emphasises his love for Juliet.
The first area of conflict comes right at the start of the play. This is when Samson and Gregory, two servants from each family, have an argument about who has the better manhood. After this, Gregory bites his thumb at Samson; this causes the pair to fight.
The next area of conflict comes in act 3 scene 1. This involves Tybalt, Romeo, Mercutio and Benvolio. Tybalt comes into the scene looking for Romeo, but instead, Tybalt and Mercutio. This involves a lot of insults such as Mercutio reacting to Tybalt entering “By my heel, I care not.” , Or Tybalt saying to Romeo: “Thou art a villain”, and when Mercutio interrupts Romeo and Tybalt’s argument by saying “O calm, dishonourable fool, vile submission!”. These insults show the hatred between Mercutio and Tybalt and Tybalt and Romeo, but not Romeo and Tybalt. They are about to have a fight when Romeo enters the scene. This diverts Tybalt’s attention on to Romeo and away from Mercutio. Tybalt wants to fight Romeo, but Romeo doesn’t want to fight Tybalt because he is secretly his cousin. Because of this, Mercutio stands up for Romeo and fights Tybalt. Romeo breaks up the fight because he can’t face his best mate and cousin fighting each other. When Mercutio turns to walk away, Tybalt stabs him in his back. Mercutio still tries to insult Tybalt saying: ” ‘Tis but a scratch!’ “. This shows that he wants to try and get the last word in between them before he dies.
The next area of conflict follows on from the Tybalt and Mercutio fight. Romeo, full of emotion at the loss of his best mate, now doesn’t care that Tybalt is his cousin, and just wants revenge in Mercutio’s honour. The fight escalates from an argument between Romeo and Tybalt into a full on fight with weapons. At the end of the fight, Romeo stabs Tybalt and Tybalt dies.
The next area of significant conflict comes in act 3 scene 5. This involves Capulet, Lady Capulet, Juliet and the nurse. The argument arises because Juliet reveals that she doesn’t want to marry Paris because she doesn’t love him. This news makes Capulet tremendously angry because he feels that Paris is the perfect man for Juliet. He even goes as for as to say: “Young baggage, disobedient wretch…Get thee to a church…Speak not, reply not, do not answer me! My fingers itch…out on her!”. This shows that he has really strong feelings about Juliet marring Paris. At the end of the argument, Juliet turns to the nurse in the hope of getting some backing, to Juliet’s horror; she basically says that she doesn’t have a choice and that she should marry Paris.
The last area of significant conflict is when Romeo goes to Juliet’s tomb. This causes conflict because Paris is already there. Paris is full of emotion because of the apparent death of Juliet as so is Romeo because he hasn’t seen her because he was banned from Verona for killing Tybalt. Paris challenges Romeo to fight and Romeo accepts. They fight and Romeo kills Paris. After this, he goes into the tomb to see Juliet, whom he thinks is dead. He is so upset that he takes a poises potion and kills himself. When Juliet comes round, she sees Romeo lying dead next to her and kills herself.
The first conflict arises between Gregory and Sampson, because Sampson says things like “Let us take the law of our sides”. Then later, he bites his thumb at Gregory, which in Shakespeare’s day was very offensive. After that, Sampson says: “I serve as good a man as you.” But Abram doesn’t accept this and replies: “No better?” this makes Sampson very worried and he doesn’t know what to reply with and asks Gregory who says: ” Say better”. Sampson takes this advice and say’s: “Yes better”. Abram doesn’t believe him and says: “You lie!” At this, they start fighting. This area of conflict shows that the servants are proud of their masters, and that at the low level of the servants, the hatred is still rife. This area of conflict is an essential part of the play because it introduces the hatred between the two families and it is a dramatic start, which grabs the audience’s attention straight away.
The conflict in act 3 scene 1 between Mercutio and Tybalt really starts to rise when Romeo enters. When Romeo dos enter, Mercutio and Tybalt are squaring up to each other, but as Romeo enters, Tybalt says: “Peace be with you, here comes my man”. This shows that Tybalt is an all round bad character and he will cause conflict between anyone. After an argument, Mercutio says: “O calm dishonourable vile submission, put up your sword and fight!” Tybalt agrees to this and draws his sword. While they are fighting, Romeo breaks them up and tells them to stop fighting because he can’t take his best mate and cousin fighting. Mercutio drops his sword, but as he is walking away, Tybalt stabs him in the back. This turns the audience against Tybalt as it shows that he is the villain and the audience don’t like them. This is a major piece of conflict because it makes Romeo very angry and it leads to the next conflict.
The next area of significant conflict between Romeo and Tybalt is already at boiling point because of Tybalt murdering Mercutio. In the short conversation between romeo and Tybalt before romeo kills Tybalt, romeo calls Tybalt a “Villain” and Tybalt calls Romeo a “Retched boy” at which Romeo would have been very affected by that, and would have made him even more angry and made romeo even more prepared to murder Tybalt. This has a big impact because it results in Romeo being banned from Verona. This puts the audience in several different minds; First of all, they are upset that Romeo has been banished from Verona, whereas on the second hand, he could have been killed for murdering someone else. But at least Tybalt is out of the play.
In the big argument between Capulet and Juliet, it escalates from difference of opinion, Juliet revealing that she doesn’t want to marry Paris by saying “Not proud you have, but thankful you have: Proud can ‘ never be of what I hate, but thankful even for hate that is meant love”. This infuriates Capulet and he threatens Juliet that if she doesn’t marry Paris, then he will throw her out onto the street by saying “Graze where you will, you shall not house with me………And you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets”. This shows just how serious he is and how much he thinks he has found the perfect man for Juliet and he feels teat she is just throwing his efforts back in his face and for that, he is throwing her out of the house. Even though this conflict is not a violent one, it is just as powerful as a violent one, because it has a deep effect on the audience’s emotions.
The last area of conflict is when Romeo goes to see Juliet at her tomb and Paris is there. Juliet is lying there because she took a sleeping potion, which would give the belief that she is dead. She took this potion to get out of marrying Paris. The conflict between Romeo and Paris escalates when Romeo says : “Good gentle youth, tempt not a desperate man, fly hence and leave me.” But Paris doesn’t agree with this and says: “I do defy thy conjunction”. I can imagine the audience being shocked at this, because it would be obvious that Romeo is angry and ready to fight and kill anyone that gets in the way. After this, Romeo and Paris fight, which results in Paris dieing. After this fight, Romeo goes through to see Juliet and sees her looking dead and drinks his own poison potion and dies. Then Juliet wakes up and sees Romeo dead beside her, so she kisses the lips of Romeo and takes the potion and she dies. This is a dramatic ending to the play, which is good, because it keeps it in the audience’s minds.
In my mind, there are only two types of conflict, they are: violent conflict and mental conflict. The violent conflict occurs in all but one of the major, effective areas conflict. The mental conflict is the argument between Juliet and Capulet and I think this is one of the more effective conflicts because it is a mental one and it sticks in the mind.
Violent conflict is more vital for dramatic effect because it can emphases hatred and brings death, whereas, mental is good for emotional effect because it lasts longer in the audience’s mind.
Overall, I think that the conflict in the play is good, because it keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and hooked on the play.
