How has Shakespeare crafted act 1 scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet for maximum impact on the audience?

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How has Shakespeare crafted act 1 scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet for maximum impact on the audience?

Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy that tells the story of two ‘‘star crossed lovers’’ who pursue their love for each other despite the fact that their families have a prolonged hatred of one another.

        It was written in around 1595, when Shakespeare was thought to be about 26 years old, but it is set in Verona, Italy, in the 1300’s.

        Act 1 begins with a fight between the servants of the Montagues’ and the Capulets’. Shakespeare begins the scene like this to attract the audiences’ attention and to make them take sides. Lord Capulet has sent one of his servants to deliver invitations to people inviting them to a banquet at his house the Capulet servant cannot read, so he asks one of the other servants to it for him...the servant that reads it though, just so happens to be a Montague servant! Romeo then fids out from Balthazar, his man servant, that his love Rosaline is going.

        Juliet is the only child of Lord and Lady Capulet. Lord Capulet has arranged a marriage with his daughter, Juliet to Paris, who is rich, and has contacts with Prince Escalus, who rules Verona.

        Juliet is reluctant to marry Paris for various reasons. One reason is that she doesn’t want to marry him just because it is what her father wants, she also isn’t in love with Paris and thinks that she will find him boring and unexciting.

        Juliet’s relationship with her mother is very ‘sterile’. She is closer to her nurse than her mother, possibly because she has been looked after and cared for all her life by her nurse while her mother took a back seat. We know that Juliet is not close to her mother because she calls her ‘‘madam’’.

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        Act 1 scene 5 is a crucial part of Romeo and Juliet because it’s where Romeo and Juliet first meet. They meet at the Capulet’s banquet. Romeo and Juliet both with different expectations for the evening-Juliet goes so that she can  dance with Paris to see whether she likes hi enough to get married (in Shakespeare’s time you married for power and money-not love).

        Although Romeo foresees something going wrong, ‘‘some consequence left hanging in the stars’’, he goes anyway in the hope that he will see Rosaline. Romeo later confides in his cousin, and good friend, Benvolio that his love ...

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