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Violence And Conflict A Central Theme To William Shakespere's Romeo And Juliet

Violence and Conflict a central theme to William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

The play Romeo and Juliet is a romantic tragedy set in Verona. The characters Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet fall in love and get married, however there love is forbidden by there family’s grudge against each other, this causes violence and conflict between the families and also in the families. The play is very much about family honour and how people protect it. This theme can be related to by 21st century people as well as 16th century people who were in Shakespeare’s time. This love story ends in bloodshed and the lover’s death. From the very beginning of the play it is shown that the lover’s death was inevitable, the sheer hatred between the families was always going to doom the youths. In the prologue, it says, ‘doth with their death bury their parents strife’ which states when they die there parents will forget about there hatred for one another.
It was four hundred years ago when William Shakespeare wrote the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. It was first performed in the Globe theatre in 1599 when Queen Elizabeth 1st ruled England. The Queen was very fond of the theatre and so were 16th century citizens. It was important to make the play as exciting as possible because most people lived very boring and repetitive lives. That probably the reason for the violence and conflict to be a central theme in this play
Act 1 scene 1is set in a street in Verona with Sampson and Gregory, two serving men of the house of Capulet. They are talking offensively of Montague showing there hatred for them, ‘A dog of the house of Capulet moves me’ this is a big insult stating that all Montagues are dogs and that makes him want to fight. Gregory is saying how that could make him weak and then Sampson talks about killing the men and raping the women which is a very violent thing and cruel thing to say. Its very crude, people in the 21st century would never talk like this. This line...

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