How does Shakespeare engage the audience in Act One Scene Five of Romeo and Juliet?

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James Llewellyn 10DOJ.

How does Shakespeare engage the audience in Act One Scene Five of Romeo and Juliet?

At the beginning of Act One Scene Five, Shakespeare engages the audience by using the servants as they rush around getting everything ready for Lord Capulet’s party.

“Where’s Potpan that he helps not take away? He shift a trencher? He scrape a trencher? “.

Although the servants are minor characters they are important at the start of this scene, because they create a busy and lively mood as they organise every thing.

 “Away with the joint stools, remove the court cupboard, look to the plate. Good thou, save me a piece of march-pane, and, as thou loves me, let the porter Susan Grindstone and Nell. (He calls) Antony and Potpan!”

This is a different atmosphere from Act One Scene Four as Romeo is unhappy just before they go to the party because he is in love with Roseline, and Roseline doesn’t love him. Romeo and his friends wear masks to avoid identification when  he finally agrees to go. An Elizabethan audience would have been engaged in the masked ball and the mystery of it.

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Shakespeare emphasises this light party atmosphere by using Lord Capulet to be in a nostalgic mood that increases the party atmosphere.

“Welcome, gentlemen. Ladies that have their toes unplagued with corns will walk a bout with you.”

The Elizabethan audience would have been involved in the atmosphere of the Globe Theatre’s production because of the dancing and music going on upon the apron stage and their closeness to the action.

Romeo’s dialogue differs to other characters because he speaks in rhyming couplets. “(To a servant) What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?”

 The ...

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