Romeo’s best friend Mercutio is brutally slayed by Tybalt, Juliet’s ‘fiery tempered’ cousin. Romeo gets his revenge and slays Tybalt; he is the banished form Verona.
Friar Lawrence, the priest in Verona, devises a devious plan to fool people that Juliet is dead, (so Juliet doesn’t have to marry the county Paris), the priest tries to bring Romeo and Juliet together, but it all backfires. Romeo, believing Juliet is dead, kills himself to join Juliet in death. Juliet wakes and finds her beloved Romeo dead, also takes her life to be with Romeo. Their deaths end the terrible feud between the Capulets and the Montagues.
The traditional tragedy in Elizabethan England used to be when someone of very high power becomes powerless by the end of the play; this usually ends in their death. Elizabethans were surprised when they saw the play ‘Romeo and Juliet’ because Shakespeare has changed the genre from the typical tragedy into a romantic tragedy, bringing the idea of romance into the play to create more tension between the two families. Shakespeare has also used Romeo and Juliet who are so young, innocent and powerless from the beginning.
The society in which they live in and their families threaten the love of Romeo by Juliet. Juliet fears for Romeo’s safety at the hands of her kinsmen, if they saw Romeo with Juliet they would kill him. Love, in Verona’s society is about domination. The servants of Capulet joke about sex in an aggressive manner. The selflessness of Romeo and Juliet, equal in love, and willing to take their life for each other is the strong contrast between love and hate in the play.
The play “Romeo and Juliet” is not all fiction, their story is based around two families from Italy in 1290, the two families ‘Montecchi’ and Capelletti’, had an on-going feud, which ultimately destroyed these two families. Shakespeare based his play on a 1562 poem by Arthur Brooke called ‘The Tragicall Historye of Romeous and Juliet’, which is based around a French adaptation of Matteo Bandello, is called ‘Romeo e Giulietta’. So you can see how all these ideas from different sources lead to the creation of Shakespeare’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’. although
