We first meet Juliet in the play when she is only a young girl. She is just a little girl playing in the nursery with her nurse. Lady Capulet talks to Juliet about marriage. When Juliet is offered marriage Juliet responds by saying that up till now she has not thought much about it. “It is an honour that I dream not of”. This answer is child like. Juliet seems to be an obedient and well behaved girl. Unlike Romeo, Juliet seems to be protected from life by her nurse and through the play has other people to do things for her.
After the two characters have met for the first time there is a clear difference to them. After the party where they first meet, a hidden Romeo sees Juliet in an upstairs window. Juliet is unaware of him being there and she thinks aloud. She says “ Deny thy father and refuse thy name; Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.” Juliet knows that if her father knew of her love for Romeo he would forbid them from being together. The Capulets hate the Montagues so there would be no way that he would allow his daughter to be seeing a Montague. She knows this and says that she would be willing to refuse her name and deny her father to be with Romeo. This is a major change in Juliet’s character, before she met Romeo she was an obedient girl who did what she was told now she was ready to say no to her father all because of her love for Romeo. Juliet’s disobedient is seen later in the play also when she tells her father that she will not marry Paris. “ I will not marry yet” she does not respect what her father has told her to do. This is something that is out of character for Juliet and she is only doing it because of her love for Romeo.
We see a different side of Romeo too now that he is with Juliet. When Romeo has arranged his marriage to Juliet he is happy again and Mercutio says “Now art thou sociable” he is pleased to have Romeo back. This is a different Romeo than the one that we saw at the beginning of the play, before Romeo was miserable and sad but now he is sociable and happy. We also see that Romeo spends little time thinking over his actions. When Tybalt kills Mercutio, Romeo does not stop for a moment and think through what he is about to do, he just rushes in, kills Tybalt and leaves himself in a right mess. He rushes in and leaves Tybalt with no choice but to fight Romeo, “Either thou or I, or both, must go with him.” This is a stupid thing for Romeo to do because if he just waited for a moment to think of the consequences of his actions he might have changed his mind. The Prince had said that the next person to start fighting in Verona will pay with their lives, this would be Tybalt but when Romeo kills him Romeo is the one looking at this death sentence. Romeo lacks self control latter in the play when he kills Paris also.
Juliet takes control of herself when she realises that everyone apart from the Friar has deserted her. She makes a brave and stupid decision to fake her own death by sedating herself. She has never had to make such a big decision before, there have been people to that for her, for instance even her marriage was decided for her. This leads to another rash decision by Romeo who kills himself, whereas if he had just waited a little bit longer all would end well but he did not. This meant that when Juliet woke up she decided she wanted to live no more either “ drunk all, and left no friendly drop”. She could not live without Romeo and so kills herself.
Looking back at the play you can see that by the end of the play both characters, Romeo and Juliet, behave differently to the way they did at the beginning of the play. Romeo does not really change like Juliet does. Romeo is unhappy at the beginning of the play and as many of his friends say it is not the real Romeo. This suggests that by the end of the play we are seeing the real Romeo, but even so it is a different side of Romeo to the one we saw at the beginning of the play. Juliet’s character definitely changes. At the beginning of the play she is a good girl who does what she is told and does not have to worry about anything because there is someone else there to do it for her. By the end she is a mature woman who is making mature decisions for herself, which ultimately ends up with her dead. The play lasts less than a week and the two characters love for each other changes their characters behaviour dramatically. This dramatic change in behaviour leads to dramatic action and at the end of the play they fall victim to their behaviour changes and are both dead.
