How Does Shakespeare Get The Audience Involved In Act 1 Scene 5 Of Romeo And Juliet?

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Jonny Green

How Does Shakespeare Get The Audience Involved In Act 1 Scene 5 Of Romeo And Juliet?

William Shakespeare was an Elizabethan play writer. He expressed feelings of character’s emotions and thoughts in extraordinary ways so it would feel as if you knew the characters. It was features like this that helped him to become the greatest playwright of all time. Shakespeare’s text is not plain and simple English, as it would be today, but a delightful poetry which could express the feelings of characters in a much greater way and would make the audience feel they were part of the play aswell. Before Shakespeare wrote this performance his plays were usually comical or were just read out by a narrator so it was unusual for an audience to view a play like this, however, he won the audience over with his ability to produce outstanding theatrical plays. The play was first introduced on stage in 1597 after he had modified and turned a poem into a play. The poem was titled ‘The Tragical History Of Romeous And Juliet’ which was wrote by a poet called Arthur Brooke in 1562. Shakespeare changed the poem, which was a nine-month love story, into a five-day romantic, dramatically eventful, misfortune and meaningful relationship. Shakespeare modified the original title so it just displayed the names of the characters, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ although Romeous had been altered to Romeo.

   

     “Romeo and Juliet” is one of the most famous plays ever written and it revolves around fate. It is a story of two young lovers who are united by love but divided by their families. All of the events, which occur within the story, are a result of fate or destiny. Romeo and Juliet come from two feuding families, both alike in nobility. They fall in love, but cannot publicly proclaim their love for one another because of their feuding families. In the opening prologue it is clearly stated that Romeo and Juliet are “star-cross’d” lovers, which means that their destiny and fate control them, and that their relationship is doomed. Their love grows so strong that they take their lives because they cannot be together. Shakespeare cleverly uses the family feud in the play to make the characters on each side very alike in many ways. Although they are enemies they are very similar but are separated by a their family feud that has existed for a long time. Shakespeare also creates each character so they can be special in their own way, expressing their emotions with love, violence, hatred, affection, anger, passion, humour and fear. Some of their feelings are also revealed in melodious poems.

     

     Shakespeare published the play during the Elizabethan era. This era had devised a rule that only males were allowed to perform on stage, so they had to play the roles of the women as they believed it to be improper to have a female acting on stage. This meant that creating a romance and sign of love on stage with only men playing the roles would be a very challenging task. Shakespeare had to create a sense of love and emotion through the language to show the feelings of the characters. He supplies this excellently through his poetry and by using references to god to back up the affection perfectly. For example Romeo says to Juliet, “If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine”, meaning that if he declares his feelings for her, will he debase her image and holiness to a normal level? In the sense that he is just a typical human and she is heavenly and divine because she is so beautiful and wonderful.

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     In the play, Mercutio (great friend of Romeo’s) and Benvolio (Romeo’s cousin) want Romeo to go the ball as they, and Montague and Lady Montague, are very concerned about Romeo and think he is spending to much time mourning and being depressed. It was Mercutio and Benvolio’s intention to take Romeo’s mind of Rosaline and they did this by taking him to a ball.

     

     In Act 1 Scene 5 of the play the Capulets have a ball to show they are all mighty and powerful and to show off their ...

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