How does Shakespeare use language to tell us about people's personalities?

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English                Philipp Rüdiger

Romeo and Juliet                13.02.2005

  1. How does Shakespeare use language to tell us about people’s personalities? How do different characters talk, what can we tell about them from the way they talk, how does Romeo’s language change as he changes, how does it change according to his mood?

The language plays an important role in “Romeo and Juliet” as it defines and characterizes the characters in the play. It is used to display which social class they are in, signals the change in the characters and reflects their mood or feelings. The languages special importance lies in giving color to the love between Romeo and Juliet.

The importance and social status of a character can easily be identified by the way they speak. The more important characters, which all belong to the higher classes all speak in verse form and use much imagery. This verse is sometimes even in sonnet form. The imagery used gives color to the language and there are certain imageries, which reappear more often in the play, so called iterative imageries, one of these is light and darkness. This image gives a strong contrast used to describe Romeo’s and Juliet’s love for one another. The less important characters, which most of the time are the lower class, such as servants or musicians, do not have such richness in their word choice to bring color to the language. They speak in prose and often speak very bawdily. The language was used as a tool to separate the more important and less important characters.

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The bawdy language is mainly used by Mercutio and the Nurse but they mention physical love in different contexts. Mercutio is made sympathetic to the audience because he is joking a lot, teases other characters and mocks them with bawdy remarks. He does this for fun and amuses the audience by for example singing “An old hare hoar, and an old hare hoar” (Act 2, Scene 4) about the Nurse. The Nurse however is a very simple character and she sees love as a simply practical thing to make children. “Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit” (Act ...

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