The arrival of two of the Montague’s servants puts Sampson and Gregory’s boasting of their superiority to the test. Once again, Shakespeare injects humour into the scene by the servants biting their thumbs to one another and sarcastically repeating “Sir”. The heated argument soon turns into a fight and brings about a lot of action onto the stage. In comparison to the prologue, the stage would now be filled with commotion; Shakespeare purposely uses this busy visual effect to increase the interest of the audience.
The entrance of Benvolio into the play is very different to that of Tybalt. The audience immediately sees the peace-making ways of Benvolio by trying to calm the servants down by saying, “put up your swords, you know not what you do”. Whereas the arrival of Tybalt is very dramatic showing his aggressive and violent behaviour towards the feud. Tybalt relates the word “peace” to his hatred of “hell” and calls Benvolio a “coward” for asking him to “put up thy sword, or manage it to part these men”. This reckless behaviour inevitably leads to them fighting and causes a riot in the street including civilians.
The involving of the civilians refers back to the prologue “where civil hands makes civil hands unclean”. Shakespeare gives the audience a taste of what is going to happen in the rest of the play by including the fight so early on. This emphasise to the audience the importance of the feud and how it affects the innocent civilians of Verona.
Shakespeare uses the arrival of Capulet, Lady Capulet, Montague and Lady Montague to once again humour the audience. Both Capulet and Montague see the fight and request for their swords to join in. Both wives hold back their husbands saying that they are too old to fight and “a crutch, a crutch! Why call you for a sword”. However, the eagerness of the husbands to join the riot once again shows the audience the extent of this “ancient grudge”.
The arrival of the Prince Escales also shows the effect of the “ancient grudge”. At first the Prince is unable to even stop them fighting and resorts to calling the men “beasts” giving us an idea of how out of control the fight is. The Prince gives the culprits a warning by saying “if ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of peace”. This warning sets up the whole tragedy by clarifying what the audience has already been told, it is inevitable that there will be at least one death in the play. To emphasise this point even more to the audience, Shakespeare has written the Prince’s speech in iambic pentameter.
After the brawl is over, Montague, Lady Montague and Benvolio talk about Romeo. Shakespeare cleverly uses this conversation to increase the anticipation of the audience, as they have not even seen Romeo at any point so far. They talk of Romeo’s depressive state of mind with his parents obviously being worried about him. Montague says that Romeo “makes himself an artificial night: black and portentous must this humour prove”, this suggests that something bad is going to happen. Benvolio agrees to find out what is wrong with Romeo and the audience finally meets Romeo.
Benvolio discovers a love sick Romeo who seems to be avoiding any human contact. Romeo talks of an unrequited love where Rosalind refuses to love him back; he even says that “she hath Dian’s wit” meaning that Cupid’s arrows are missing her. To emphasise how confused and sad Romeo is, Shakespeare uses oxymorons, “O brawling love, O loving hate”, “feather of lead” etc, everything is not what it seems to Romeo. Elizabethan’s would have considered Romeo’s behaviour to be perfectly normal and acceptable, but today, it could be thought to be immature and self-centred. Benvolio tries to convince Romeo o “examine other beauties” but he claims, “Thou canst not teach me to forget”. However, the audience know that it is not Rosalind that Romeo ends up with which could be an argument about whether Romeo’s elaborate way of speaking about his emotions in this Act 1 are artificial.
All of the themes of love, hate, conflict and fate in the play are actually introduced in Act 1 Scene 1. Shakespeare does this to make sure that the audience are able to grasp the actual point of the play. What the play is about is told immediately, when Romeo is talking of his love for Rosalind, he actually sums up what the play is about in just one line, “Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love”.
In conclusion, the events and themes, which are shown in Act 1 Scene 1, predict the future tragedy. The combination of love and hate is bound to end with death. The audience hasn’t even seen or heard of Juliet yet which emphasises Shakespeare’s point of the whole play. Shakespeare wants the audience to concentrate on how the characters come to their tragic end so they can learn from its didactic purpose.