Discuss The Themes Of Violence And Conflict In ‘Ro And Juliet’
Discuss the Themes of Violence and Conflict in ‘Romeo and Juliet’
‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a tragic play, about how the untimely deaths of two teenage star-crossed lovers ultimately unite their feuding households. Although it is a play about love, there are many scenes that contain violence and conflict. The violence and conflict in the play takes place between the Montagues and Capulets, and ends up killing their only two children. At the very beginning of the play in Act 1 Scene 1, we are plunged into the themes of violence and conflict, and even before we meet the main characters, Romeo and Juliet, we see quarrelling between the servants of the two families. The play then goes on to end with the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, which finally resolves the ancient grudge between the two feuding families. In this essay, I will discuss the violence and conflict that is central to ‘Romeo and Juliet’, and I will be using scenes as references to discuss this theme.
‘Romeo and Juliet’ was written by William Shakespeare, who was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is set in the 16th century, and was first performed in the Globe Theatre in London in 1599. The Globe was an exciting place to enter. You had to pay one penny to get in and more if you wanted to sit down in the gallery. There were no reserved seats, and when the theatre was full, there were about three thousand people all around the stage, which meant an actor would have been surrounded, with some people literally at his feet, as the stage stuck out into the audience. It was important for Shakespeare to make his plays as exciting as possible, because there were no intervals or special effects, so the audience had to use their imagination a great deal, and the more exciting it was, the longer they would stay engaged for. There were no specially designed sets or no lighting, and the night scenes were not shown in the dark. When Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, Queen Elizabeth ruled England....
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