In Act 1 Scene 1 Gregory and Sampson, servants of the Capulets, are talking about the Montagues and seriously insulting them. “A dog of the house of Montague moves me,” suggests that, to the Capulets, the Montagues are basically worthless and really should not be worth a fight. However, when they do fight everyone in Verona gets involved. This implies that because of both of the family’s involvement in the everyday running of the town, the innocent civilians get caught up in what ever happens between the two families. The servants highlight this, “the quarrel is between our masters, and us their men.” This could imply that the families are wanting others to get involved and are maybe ordering staff to stick up for them. Or this could mean that the servants feel obliged to fight for the family which they work for, as with perhaps some of the other innocent characters. This links to the death of Mercutio, a friend of Romeo, yet still a very innocent man.
Mercutio is a very crucial character in the first half of the play: being the Prince’s kinsman, he was the one who got Romeo and other friends into the Capulet’s party, and yet he still gets killed off quite early in the play. This could be Shakespeare’s way of highlighting how important of a role death is in the play. There are many arguments for who is responsible for Mercutio’s death: it could go back to when Capulet and Montague first fell out which, in the long term, is what caused it; it could however, be the younger members of both families fault, as they are the ones who want to fight and bring up the “ancient grudge,” and it could just be Romeo’s fault as he wouldn’t fight with Tybalt himself. Personally I think that it is the actions of Tybalt and the other younger members of the families who cause the death of an innocent, neutral man. When Mercutio say “A plague o’ both your houses” it links to the prologue, “two households,” which basically means that the two families are to blame. “Plague” is an interesting word because at the time the play was written, and possibly before, a “plague” would have been something which could have wiped out whole villages and towns, so the audience would have recognised the speech by Mercutio to have been a very powerful one.
Superstition and fate is another common theme in the play and it is first mentioned in the prologue, “Star-crossed” implies that they are destined to be together, however there is going to be bad luck for them. Also, throughout the prologue there is evidence that Romeo and Juliet were destined to meet, fall in love and die together. “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes,” means that the two people were conceived/brought up by two enemies. “Star-crossed lovers” tells us that they fall in love. We are also told that that they would die together, “Doth with their death.”
Premonitions also are a big part in “Romeo and Juliet.” Both main characters have them. Romeo has a premonition before he goes to the Capulet’s party, “By some vile forfeit of untimely death.” Which suggests that the consequence of him going to the party is going to result in his early death, which we later find out it does.
Friar Laurence does not spend much time on stage throughout the play but part of the plot does basically revolve around him. Some people may say that Romeo and Juliet were really unlucky that fate was really not on their side but I think that the Friar played a big part in this. Firstly and mainly because of how ridiculous and long-winded the plan was to begin with. Also maybe he should have thought about risk assessment and risk control which may have stopped this all from happening. But was it just his fault? Surely if Romeo or Juliet had an ounce of intelligence between them and weren’t so single minded they would have stopped this plan and thought of a simpler and shorter one.
When the play was written, in the late 1500s, religion played a big part in everyday life, especially in Italy. This is evident in the play as Shakespeare included many religious references in many of the important scenes in the play. “Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.” This use of language goes hand in hand with how Shakespeare experiments and uses puns throughout the play. “Ask for me tomorrow, you shall find me a grave man.” Even when Mercutio is dying Shakespeare couldn’t resist adding another pun. “Two households both alike in dignity” links with this as further on in the play we realise the families are not at all dignified.
Baz Lurman also tries experimenting in his film, where the prologue is set out as a news flash which is unusual because a news flash is normally there to tell us what has happened. He also highlights how the fight in Act 1 Scene 1 is so colossal, including most civilians in the streets in addition to the entire families and using guns to indicate to us how significant these fights were.
Throughout the play many people died – some more innocent than others. But that’s why death is one of the main themes. However I do believe that of all the characters that died in the play were innocent, including Tybalt, as they were all just caught up in a pointless “ancient grudge” which should have been forgotten a long time before this happened which is why I have come to the conclusion that both Capulet and Montague were very self-centred in the way that they included everyone in their brawl and didn’t stop it before it got uncontrollable.
