Explore Shakespeares Presentation of Act 3 Scene 1 as a Turning Point in the Play

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Explore Shakespeare’s Presentation of Act 3 Scene 1 as a Turning Point in the Play

Romeo and Juliet was written by William Shakespeare in around 1594-1596. However, the original story goes as far back as around 200AD, before becoming popular in Italian literature in the 15th Century. Shakespeare based Romeo and Juliet on a poem by Arthur Brooke entitled “The Tragicall History of Romeus and Juliet”. Shakespeare was very talented at updating and modernizing old tales. Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy, but it is interwoven with many other genres including romance, violence and comedy. He included the violence and comedy to keep the fickle Elizabethan audiences who indulged in bloodthirsty entertainment like bear baiting and cockfighting.

Throughout the play, tension has been built up and by Act 3 Scene 1 the audience already knows many of the characters temperaments that there will be a tragedy. The first example of tension in the play is in the prologue. It tells of “star cross’d lovers”, which hints at the involvement of fate. It also serves to develop the theme of conflict, using emotive words like “grudge, mutiny, strife, rage and fatal”. It tells the audience that the two main characters will die, “who do with their death bury their parent’s strife”, and there is a pun on the word bury as the lovers are buried and the grudge is ended. The prologue also sets the scene in Verona and shows the audience that there has fighting going on between the two families for a long time (“ancient grudge”).

So far in the play, Romeo has been presented as very fickle when it comes to love, at the beginning of the play he claimed to be in love with Rosaline, but as soon as he meets Juliet he seems to forget about her. Friar Lawrence asks about Rosaline and he replies ‘I have forgot that name and that name’s woe’. This is one of Shakespeare’s moral messages of the play, that some men don’t actually love women but only lust after them. Romeo’s love is also very petrarchian, a contemporary idea that lovers must suffer. Romeo is also a strong believer in fate, often too much so, and he reinforces the themes of fate introduced in the prologue by saying things like “Some consequences are yet hanging in the stars”.

Juliet is younger than Romeo, by many years, (“My child is yet a stranger in the world”) but often shows much more maturity. When Romeo is asking her for marriage in the world famous ‘Balcony Scene’ she says “It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden”. Not only does this line show that Juliet is mature, it also seems to be a premonition of the tragedy that occurs. However, her naivety shows when she accepts Romeo’s offer of marriage against her father’s wishes. At the time this would’ve been a great insult to her father and great shame would’ve befallen her. Audiences at the time would’ve found it outrageous for a young girl to disobey her father’s wishes.

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To further build tension towards Act 3 Scene 1, Shakespeare has Tybalt see Romeo at the Capulet party and tell his Uncle Romeo is a villain- an offensive insult at the time. However, when he asks his uncle if he can confront him his uncle becomes furious at Tybalt and calls him a “saucy boy”. Although the audience sees Tybalt as being evil, as is further portrayed in the Baz Luhrmann interpretation of the play (where Tybalt is wearing devil horns), he is actually doing the thing he has been told to do all his life- hate Montagues. Being ...

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