1. Important scenes explained with analysis and quotations
2. Theme of Love
3. Critical essay questions + plans
4. Past paper questions
5. Example essay
6. Further resources
7. Drama revision
Prologue
The prologue takes the form of a 14 line sonnet and is performed by a Chorus. This sets the scene and establishes the setting (Verona), the plot (ancient grudge), the lovers (Romeo and Juliet) and explains how their love ends the feud between their two families – the Capulets and Montagues.
Theme of Fate
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 fearful passage of their death-marked love,”
Theme of Hate
The theme of hate is clearly established in the Prologue, which is surprising as the play is famous for the love between the two characters:
“From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.”
and
“Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
Theme of Love
The love between Romeo and Juliet is also established but this is not as strong as the theme of hate. The power of their love is also shown as the Prologue advises us that:
“A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life,
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.”
Act One Scene One
In an angry scene, initially based on conflict, we are made aware of the seriousness of the conflict between the two families. We are given no account of the feud between them; it is simply there, unexplained, apparently of long standing. It is introduced into the play in no dignified way – merely the occasion of some absurd scuffling among the servants of the two hours. However, the opening is successful in engaging the attention of the audience.
Summary
The scene begins with two servants, Sampson and Gregory clearly looking for trouble with the Montague family. Their conversation is full of crude sexual references.
Theme of Love
The dirty talk however, has an important part to play. Gregory and Sampson can only see the relationship between men and women in the crudest terms. This contrasts with the real and powerful love which is to develop between Romeo and Juliet.
Characterisation
Tybalt – the conflict in this scene provides an opportunity for the quarrel-loving Tybalt to show himself off. Our first impression of Tybalt is that he is a violent and angry character:
“What drawn and talk of peace? I hate the word
As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee.”
Romeo – the first scene also introduces us to Romeo the lover; as soon as Romeo is mentioned the mood changes. Up to this point, the action and language of the play have been characterised by violence and obscenity – the obscene comments of Gregory and Sampson; the violent, aggressive language of Tybalt; the hatred between Capulet and Montague. Suddenly, violence has given way to peace and serenity, crudity to symbols of beauty.
When Lady Montague mentions Romeo, Benvolio replies:
“Madam, an hour before the worshipp’d sun
Peered forth the golden window of the east...”
However, our introduction to Romeo comes with a bit of shock. We would expect him to be lovesick over Juliet but instead he is in love with Rosaline. Romeo is introduced as a melancholy and gloomy character. He is pining after Rosaline who has spurned him:
“Why then, O brawling love, O loving hate,
O anything, of nothing first create!”
“O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still waking sleep, that is not what it is!”
Rosaline could only exist in the play to demonstrate Romeo’s passionate nature: his love of love. It seems that Romeo’s love for chaste Rosaline stems almost entirely from the reading of bad love poetry. Romeo’s love for Rosaline, then, seems immature, more a statement that he is ready to be in love than actual love.
Romeo continues to make increasingly fanciful hyperbolic statements with regards to his love of Rosaline:
“She hath forsworn to love; and in that vow
Do I live dead that live to tell it now.”
The scene concludes with Romeo telling Benvolio: “Thou canst not teach me to forget.”
Act One Scene Two
The scene introduces Paris as Capulet’s pick for Juliet’s husband thus establishing how Juliet is subject to parental influence. Regardless of any inter-family strife, Juliet’s father can force her to marry whomever he wants. Juliet’s status as a young woman leaves her with no power of choice in any social situation.
Theme of Fate
Parental influence in this tragedy becomes a tool of fate: Juliet’s arranged marriage with Paris, and the traditional feud between Capulets and Montagues, will eventually contribute to the deaths of Romeo and Juliet. The forces that determine their fate are laid in place well before Romeo and Juliet meet.
Characterisation
Romeo
Romeo is still lovelorn for Rosaline and describes himself as:
“... bound more than a madman is;
Shut up in prison, kept without my food,
Whipped and tormented.”
However, the audience can tell at this point that Romeo will meet Juliet at the feast, and expectations begin to rise. Through Shakespeare’s use of plot, the audience starts to feel the rustlings of approaching fate.
Act One Scene Three
This scene provides an insight into the three main characters. It also explores the theme of youth versus old age and the difference in attitudes between the Nurse, Lady Capulet and Juliet towards love and marriage.
Characterisation
Lady Capulet – is a flighty, ineffectual mother: she dismisses the Nurse, seeking to speak alone with her daughter, but as soon as she is alone with Juliet, Lady Capulet becomes nervous and calls the Nurse back. She wishes to speak to Juliet about marriage. Her relationship with Juliet is cold and distant; she expects complete obedience in agreeing to marry.
She also mentions to Juliet that a marriage to Paris would benefit her financially revealing her pragmatic, rather than romantic, attitude to love:
“So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him making yourself no less”
The Nurse – is a comic character and contrasts Juliet’s youthful innocence with her older (and courser) outlook on life. There is a familiarity with Juliet and this implies she, rather than Lady Capulet, raised Juliet.
Juliet – is revealed in this scene as a rather naive young girl who is obedient to her mother and Nurse. However, there are glimpses of strength and intelligence that are wholly absence in her mother. Juliet’s mother asks her to seek Paris out at the party and find pleasure in his beauty. Juliet replies stating:
“But no more deep will I endart mine eye
Than your consent gives strength to make it fly”
This seems to imply a complete obedience in Juliet but it can also been seen as an effort on Juliet’s part to use vague language as a means of asserting some control over her situation. She is agreeing to see if she might be able to love Paris but at the same time, she states she will put no more enthusiasm into this effort than her mother’s demands. This answer could indicate Juliet’s emotional maturity because she has made up her own mind that she cannot marry someone she does not love. Juliet’s attitude here anticipates her rebellion against her parents later in the play. Juliet’s view of love also points to the spiritual quality of her love for Romeo, which is not tainted by economic and sexual concerns.
Act One Scene Four
Characterisation
Mercutio – acts in direct contrast to the lovestruck Romeo and the peaceful Benvolio – he is a witty and quick-tempered sceptic. He teases Romeo for his melancholy love and using conventional images of love to underscore Romeo’s naive view of love:
“You are a lover, borrow Cupid’s wings
And soar with them above a common bound.”
He approaches the subject of dreams, like the subject of love, with witty scepticism, as he describes them both as “fantasy”.
Romeo – his final speech anticipates his meeting with Juliet and creates an atmosphere of impending doom, which undercuts the festivities. He intuits that he has a date with destiny (THEME OF FATE). The heavy tone of this premonition is far more serious than the shallow melancholy Romeo has so far expressed:
“I fear too early for my mind misgives
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night’s revels, and expire the term
Of a despised life closed in my breast
By come vile forfeit of untimely death.”
This is foreshadowing (TECHNIQUE) what actually happens in the rest of the play. A fateful chain of events (connection with the prologue) now begins.
Act One Scene Five
Summary
Romeo sees Juliet and forgets Rosaline entirely; Juliet meets Romeo and falls just as deeply in love. The meeting of R&J dominates the scene.
Language
Romeo first spots Juliet dancing and is instantly enchanted by her:
“O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in Ethiop’s ear”
Romeo’s language takes on a richness and beauty which was missing from his earlier, strained and insincere words about his love for Rosaline, convincing us of his real and profound love for Juliet.
Theme of Hate
Conflict is reintroduced into this play at this point through the character of Tybalt. From Romeo’s voice alone he recognises that he is a Montague:
“Now, by the stock and honour of my kin,
To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.”
“I will withdraw. But this intrusion shall,
Now seeming sweet, convert to bitterest gall.”
In the very instance when R&J first meet, Tybalt’s rage has been set, creating the circumstances that will eventually banish Romeo from Verona. In the meeting between R&J lie the seeds of their shared tragedy.
Language
The first conversation between R&J is an extended Christian metaphor. Using this metaphor, R convinces J to let him kiss her:
“If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.”
The metaphor holds many further functions. The religious overtone of the conversation clearly implies that their love can be described only through the vocabulary of religion, that pure associations with God. In this way, their love becomes associated with the purity and passion of the divine.
Sonnet
When R&J first meet, they speak just fourteen lines before their first kiss. These make up a shared sonnet with a rhyme scheme of ababcdcdefefgg. A sonnet is a perfect, idolised poetic form often used to write about love. Encapsulating the moment of origin of R&J’s love within a sonnet therefore creates a perfect match between literary content and formal style. The use of a sonnet also serves a darker purpose. The Prologue sonnet introduces the eventual death of the lovers and the shared sonnet also helps to create the sense of fate. This also creates a formal link between their love and their destiny.
Relationship
The first conversation also provides a glimpse of the roles they will each play in their relationship. R is clearly the aggressor as he uses all the skills at his disposal to win over a struck, but timid, Juliet. Note that Juliet does not move during their first kiss; she simply lets Romeo kiss her. She is still a young girl, and though she has shown her intelligence in her dialogue, she is not ready to throw herself into the action. However, Juliet is the aggressor in the second kiss. In a single conversation, Juliet transforms from a proper, timid young girl to one more mature, who understands what she desires and is quick-witted enough to procure it.
Contrasting Characters
There is a clear contrast between the reactions of R&J when they discover they have fallen in love with their greatest rivals. Romeo feels very uneasy and that he will pay dearly for this meeting and that things will turn out badly for him:
“O dear account. My life is my foe’s debt.”
Juliet on the other hand, while realising the unfortunate implications of falling in love with “the only son of (your) great enemy” is undeterred – she has fallen in love with him:
“My only love sprung from my only hate!