Romeo And Juliet Key Themes Flashcards
Love
Structure - Shakespeare also uses the way a character speaks to covey certain attitudes towards love and the effect it can have on people. E.g when Romeo is lovesick over Rosaline he drags out his speech by using monosyllables ‘sad hours seem long’. However when he meets juliet he changes the way he speaks ‘my unworthiest hand…. ready stand’. He begins to speak with rhyme, which Shakespeare often used to show control in a character. This suggests tags Juliet has made him more controlled and changed his attitudes towards love.
Context - ‘I have bought the mansion of love but not possessed it’
Conflict
‘O calm, dishonourable vile submission’
‘Three civil brawls, bread of an airy word’ The heads of the two feuding families are strong male characters. Shakespeare’s point in not even stating the cause of the feud reflects the degree to which male honour and ‘pride’ was exaggerated at the time. Maybe with the unfortunate outcome of the play
‘Peace! I hate the word as I hate hell, all montages and thee.’ Occurs right at the beginning for the play (act 1 scene 1) so is one of the first things we learn about suggesting it could be very important.
‘O brawling love! O loving hate!’ Microcosm for the whole play, two oxymorons sum up the main message Shakespeare is trying to get across, that love and hate come intertwined.
Conflict between juliet and her father
‘He shall not make me there a joyful bride!’
‘If you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend; and you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets’
However it has not always been like this, at the beginning capulet is seen as quite a good dad ‘she is the hopeful lady of my earth:, but woo her, gentle Paris, get her heart, for my will to her consent is but a part’
Fate
‘A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life’ - destined to die. Use of stars as a metaphor to embody fates characteristics. The use of such a metaphor has multiple explanations; taking a more benign view of fate, it could be that its positive aspects are reflected in the beauty of ‘stars’. After all the ‘star-crossed lovers’ were brought together by fate and this is eventually what brought peace between the feuding families.
‘O I am fortunes fool!’
‘I fear too early, for my mind misgives some consequence yet hanging in the stars’ echoes the prologue
