How does Shakespeare get the attention of the audience in the early part of Romeo and Juliet?

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How does Shakespeare get the attention of the audience in the early part of Romeo and Juliet?

A playwright wants the start of their play to catch the attention of the audience and make them want to keep watching the rest of the play to find out what happens. To do this they might start with something funny and humorous to make the audience laugh, or they might create a dramatic atmosphere to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. A playwright might also make the opening scene as action packed as possible to make the audience want more. Any of these ideas would achieve the aim of involving the audience.

Shakespeare begins all of his plays differently but with something to get the audience hooked on the play. The way Shakespeare starts Macbeth is mysterious and very atmospheric, with something spooky and supernatural, but rather short and so the result is that the audience are left guessing, and the only way to find out what is going on is to watch the rest of the play.

However he begins the tempest with an action paced ship wreck to instantly draw the attention of the audience by exciting them and making them want more action, which is a good way of grabbing the audience and keeping them on the edge of their seats.

Shakespeare begins Romeo and Juliet in another different way that will grab the audience’s attention. By describing the play in a sonnet, Shakespeare captures the audience, by telling them everything that is going to happen in this play. He tells them of the fighting and action, he tells them about two families living in hatred of one another, he tells them of  “a pair of star crossed lovers” who’s love was doomed from the start, he tells them that only the lovers deaths can bring the two families together. He tells the audience the main structure of the play, but not in enough detail to make the audience think they know the play and don’t need to see it, just enough to blow their mind with the complicated twists of the story, so the audience is eager to see these points.

Shakespeare gives that audience a taster of each aspect of the play. “A pair of star crossed lovers” informs the audience of the fait and love part.

    “Civil blood makes civil hands unclean” makes the audience realise how much bloodshed there has been between the two feuding families.

    “Ancient grudge break new mutiny” speaks of the grudge being refuelled and evolving into something a lot worse than it was before.

    “But their children’s end, nought could remove” symbolises two important details, the fact that young innocent people have been dragged into the fighting and that only terrible loss that losing a child can bring will make these people realise what is happening around them and how unnecessary this violence and hatred is.

Act 1 scene 1 is a good and varied way to start this play with. The variety comes from the humorous beginning; the action packed fighting in the middle of the scene and the subdued conversation taking place at the end.

 This scene introduces important characters such as lord and lady Montague, lord and lady Capulet, who are heads of the houses that hold the grudge. We meet Tybalt, highly placed member of the Capulet household, Benvolio, also highly placed but a member of the Montague household, we meet the prince of Verona, some servants belonging to each house, and right at the end of the scene we meet Romeo Montague himself.

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 The servants, who are the first characters to enter the play, set the scene up, preparing it for the main characters. The servants start with a light humorous conversation with rather a lot of word play that could be taken to have a rude or vulgar meaning. Shakespeare would have wanted to satisfy every section of his audience and this type of humour would appeal to the more rowdy onlookers. His word play included words such as “choler” meaning angry and then shortly after he would use the word “coller” when the servants are referring to a noose, ...

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