How does Shakespeare encourage the audience to feel sympathy for Juliet throughout 'Romeo and Juliet'.

Authors Avatar

Sophie Hyde

How does Shakespeare encourage the audience to feel sympathy for Juliet throughout ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

Discuss with reference to Act III Scene V and how directional choices can affect the audience’s response. In conclusion, evaluate the moral significance of the play. 

Romeo and Juliet is certainly among the world’s greatest plays, and the story of Shakespeare’s ‘star-crossed’ young lovers whose fate is sealed by their quarrelling families, the Montagues and the Capulets, is the touchstone fable of romantic love. Coincidence, chance, unawareness: fate weaves its inexorable pattern against the background of a bitter and deadly feud, working through persons who would never knowingly harm the lovers, but who do so nonetheless. This story contains aspects of both a love story and tragedy. The tale of two teenagers who fall in love at first sight and then marry, become true lovers and then risk it all for their love is fundamentally a tragedy. It is evident that this romantic play will have an extremely tragic ending from the beginning. The chorus states that the love between Romeo and Juliet is “Death mark’d” and that the lovers “take their life” this is essentially dramatic irony. The audience therefore knows more than the characters. Some examples of tragedy in this romantic play include: - quite obviously, the misfortune of Romeo and Juliet’s forbidden love. The blight of the messenger not getting to Romeo in time which leads to Romeo just missing Juliet’s awakening is surely a tragedy. To me this is one of the most frustrating things in the play, because if he just waited two minutes he would have been reunited with Juliet. And lastly, the death of Juliet. It is sad that she felt she had to take her own life to be with the one she truly loved. I think the unusual storyline, the language that Shakespeare uses and the fact that this play is timeless is what has made it so popular over the centuries. This timeless play points out several things like: - how older generations can affect the younger ones. How we can try to control people and how they can rebel to this control, what can happen if younger people are not listened to and how people can rush into things but overall the main message is where there is civil strife, nothing is resolved.

Juliet is one of the main characters, who is intelligent- we can see this from the amount of wordplay she uses. She is also articulate, reserved, and sensible and yet she is ultimately socially independent. Which is expected in the time the play was set, whereas as a character, Juliet is fully independent. In terms of age, she is fourteen although is mature for her age, but even so, we are reminded that she is a fourteen year old teenager who is very young at heart. She is part of the Capulet family who are at the centre of a deadly feud with Romeo’s family the Montagues. Her relationship with Lady Capulet (her mother) by modern standards isn’t a ‘proper’ relationship due to Lady Capulet not being very motherly towards Juliet which isn’t surprising considering that in an upper class family in medieval Verona, a mother wouldn’t have much say in her daughters life. Whereas her ‘adoptive’ mother is the servant nurse as she is the one who has looked after Juliet all he life. Her father is Lord Capulet who is the head of the Capulet household and who can get an irritable temper if he doesn’t get his own way, for example

Join now!


        “Hang thee, young baggage! Disobedient wretch!
    I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
 or never after look me in the face” (Act iii Scene V)

This proves that lord Capulet can get a temper and that if he doesn’t get his own way he can be very mean and inconsiderate.

        Shakespeare makes the audience feel sorry for Juliet in this extreme scene by making her a young lady and the fact that she is an innocent victim makes the situation much worse. We feel sorry for Juliet when she falls in love with ...

This is a preview of the whole essay