Examine Juliet's response in act 3, scene 5

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Examine Juliet’s response in act 3, scene 5

Juliet is very sad, extremely worried, by the time she is with her parents again. Romeo is going to leave Juliet after spending their wedding night together. This thought is unbearable for Juliet. Romeo has to go before day comes because otherwise, he will get caught by Juliet’s kinsman and might be killed. Romeo uses a contrast and very direct simple language to explain his situation to Juliet ‘I must be gone and live, or stay and die.’ The stress and emotional anxiety caused by this deep situation impacts on Juliet’s response to her parents. She is worried and scared. She is crying when her lady Capulet comes in.

Lady Capulet comes in and sees Juliet is crying and thinks she is crying for her loss of cousin, Tyblat. ‘Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?’ then Juliet responds ‘yet let me weep for such feeling loss.’ Her mother assumes Juliet’s loss is Tybalt, because she does not know she is completely in love with Romeo. This use of dramatic irony because the audiences know that Juliet’s loss means Romeo but Lady Capulet thinks her loss is Tybalt. Juliet is misleads her mother by answering her questions in a tricky way. Shakespeare uses it to shows she is intelligent and artful. She also says to her mother ‘indeed I never shall be satisfied with Romeo, till I behold him – dead, notice when she speaks this sentence there is a pause before she says dead. This means she does not want Romeo dead. The reason that she says that is to mislead her mother. She answers her mother’s question skilfully, and she is playing on words.

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When Lady Capulet tells Juliet that they have arranged her marriage for her with Paris, She refuses to marry him. She says ‘I will not marry yet. And when I do, I swear it shall be Romeo, whom you know I hate, rather than Paris.’ At this point Shakespeare uses another effective dramatic irony. She does not want to marry Paris because she is not in love with Paris, but also she is already married to Romeo without her parents’ knowledge.  The audience will admire her that she is loyal to her husband. She says ‘whom you know I ...

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