Characters are another thing Shakespeare likes to contrast. For example, Mercutio and Benvolio. You would not expect these two characters to be the best of friends as they are so contrasting. Mercutio is very witty and inventive, he is an energetic young man who is up for almost anything but sometimes gets a bit carried away and pulls his sword out at any chance he gets. Even when Mercutio is on his death bed he makes a very witty speech, ‘Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man’. While, Benvolio, on the other hand, is quite a serious young man, who would rather leave his sword where it is – “I do but keep the peace”. Somehow Shakespeare brings them together and manages to make it work. I think that maybe Shakespeare is trying to imply that with two opposite people we can learn something. Like Benvolio and Mercutio – Benvolio is there to calm Mercutio down and Mercutio helps Benvolio to live a little.
To add a bit more excitement Shakespeare places two contrasting scenes side by side. In Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare is trying to change the mood very quickly into its contrasting theme/ idea like happiness and sadness, life and death, weddings and funerals. An example of this would be Act 4 .In Scene 4 it is quite a happy and lively atmosphere as it is the day of the wedding of Paris and Juliet, ‘Mass, and well said; a merry whoreson, ha!’ says Capulet. He is making wedding arrangements and sends the Nurse to awaken Juliet. Then in Scene 5 everyone is in sadness as they find out Juliet is dead. As you can see these two scenes, one after each other, completely contrast, from life, happiness and marriage to death, sadness and funeral. He contrasts scenes from the very beginning of the play, too. The beginning of the play shows us conflict and hatred, ‘Turn thee, Bevolio, look upon thy death’. Which is then followed by talk of love and sorrow, Romeo says ‘Alas that love, whose view is muffled still’. Then the mood changes again when Benvolio agrees that they go to the Capulet’s party. After this is the day of the Capulet’s party and we are shown the happier side of family life between Juliet, Lady Capulet and the nurse. When the party starts the mood is very cheerful and jolly but before you know it, the mood come crashing back down again when Juliet finds out that Romeo is a Montague, someone she is supposed to hate- ‘My only love sprung from my only hate’. By now the audience has experienced hate, love, sorrow, conflict, excitement, happiness and heartache and the play has only just begun.
Love and hate, life and death and light and dark are themes used throughout the whole play. We are told of the irrepressible love between Romeo and Juliet, a Montague and a Capulet. This contrasts because the two families hate each other, love and hate are probably the two strongest themes in the play. Romeo often describes Juliet as something from heaven- ‘bright angel’. Perhaps Shakespeare is trying to put across that Romeo and Juliet’s love is the light and the natural hatred they should feel is the darkness. The joy of life is shown a lot in the play, by Romeo and Juliet’s love, and Mercutio’s enthusiasm for life, contrasting with several of the deaths in the play, which are followed by sadness and grieving. These themes are the most obvious and are often used to the extreme. Weddings and funerals, happiness and sadness and fate and freewill are other themes used in the play. With so many different contrasting themes all happening at the same time with lots of activity and energy within the themes, it keeps the play exciting and keeps the audience on their toes. This could be Shakespeare telling us that we can’t have or feel one thing without feeling the other, for example, we can’t feel happiness without sadness, there’s no life without death and there’s no light (day) without darkness (night).
Shakespeare has brought all of the contrasting themes together by the end of the play and we have experienced lots of different themes. In my opinion, Shakespeare does not present contrast as two separate things that must not be together, but as two things that should exist for the other one to make sense and must interlink in our life as they did in Romeo and Juliet. The play works so well because contrast adds an extra sense of realism into the play which makes the audience feel more involved in the play. If the whole play was based on only one of the two, like love, happiness, marriage, light and life, we would not accept it as real because we know that life is not really like that. Shakespeare manages to presents the idea of contrast in absolutely amazing way that we are actually fooled into believing it’s really happened and feel passionate about it.