A critical and analytical essay to show and explore How Shakespeare conveys the theme of hatred and revenge throughout Romeo and Juliet.

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A critical and analytical essay to show and explore

How Shakespeare conveys the theme of hatred

and revenge throughout Romeo and Juliet.

The theme of hatred and revenge is present throughout the whole text. I am going to identify and explore how each dramatic event can be linked back to hatred and revenge or both and how this effects the ending of this terrible tragedy.

At the start of the play Shakespeare manages to create an atmosphere of unthinking violence which is shared by the entire community in fewer than a hundred lines. Act 1, scene 1, line 70 spoken by citizens “clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the Capulets! Down with the Montague's.” This shows the hatred but also introduces the two main families.

Linked into the text we can see the social and historical aspects of hatred and revenge, which are represented quite differently in the modern film to the original script of drama work, but the same message is portrayed to the audience. The film cuts out quite a large section of the dialogues which were needed to set the scene, but in the film this is visual and I think that the fewer words are stronger in context so more effective. The actors still manage to get across the emotions of the lines of the play. Both the text and the film show the social aspects of hatred between the whole of Verona because everyone becomes caught up in the violence which is started from the hatred between the two families and each of the families show the historical aspects of their hatred, which are sprung simply from history, each generation of the families has been brought up to resent one another meaning that the hatred is like a circle; ongoing.

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Throughout the text Escalus, the Prince of Verona, is a representative of law and order. He is very important and respected, containing the actions that are made through the on-going feud. We can observe this as when he departs the scenes the mood changes from one of violence and confusion too peace and order. Examples of this are first of all seen in the first scene of act 1 from line 80-101 when he makes a very powerful speech, which ends the fighting at once, and disperses the crowds. “On pain of torture, from those bloody handles, Throw your mistemper‘d ...

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