The Prologue, in sonnet form, is important because it tells the audience exactly what the play is about and how long it is; it also sets the scene by telling the audience about the two families and the ‘ancient grudge’ between them.
The Prologue suggests that the theme of conflict will be important in the play through the use of emotive language and by emphasising conflict related words. The Prologue uses phrases such as ‘death-marked love’, ‘grudge’, ‘mutiny’ and ‘civil blood’ to emphasise the violent nature of the play.
The Prologue tells us that we are supposed to learn a lesson from the play. I think it is trying to teach the audience that if there is some sort of conflict between your families then you will pay for your actions. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the two families fought against each other and in the end they all lost someone they loved.
Act1 Scene 1 comes straight after the Prologue; the audience is expecting lots of conflict and fighting between two different families. They are expecting people to be killed and two ‘star-crossed lovers’ to kill themselves because of an ‘ancient grudge’.
Sampson and Gregory, servants of Capulet, enter and begin to discuss the Montague’s. Samson in particular, is very confident and describes what he would like to do to the Montague’s.
Benvolio enters and tries to stop the fight. He tells ‘the fools to part’ and they do. Benvolio is a Montague but doesn’t want to fight; he wants peace.
However, Tybalt then enters, Benvolio wants to keep the peace but Tybalt wants to fight and says, ‘I hate the word’. Tybalt really wants a fight but Benvolio is trying to stop him.
The Capulet and Montague’s desire to get involved in the conflict is very strong. Both families want to fight but Sampson and Gregory are ready to fight and they want to fight more than everybody else.
When the Prince enters he gives the warning, ‘if they disrupt the streets again then their lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.’ If the Prince hadn’t have said this then they would’ve carried on fighting and disturbing the streets. The Princes speech is an iambic pentameter and is very formal.
The audience and the characters react to the Prince’s speech in the same way. The Prince tells them to stop fighting or else they’ll die so they felt quite scared by these words. The audience would feel that if they have another fight, which would most likely happen, then people and citizens will die.
This conflict would therefore have intrigued the audience and create suspense as the audience prepared for more conflict.
The build up of Capulets anger is sudden because in line 141-145 Capulet is using rhetorical questions showing that he is worried but not angry. Then, when Juliet tells him that she won’t marry Paris, Capulet explodes with anger. This shows that daughters were supposed to do what they were told and when they didn’t their families disowned them.
Juliet’s views are important but she doesn’t have much opportunity to speak. Juliet says,
“Good father, beseech you on my knees, / Hear me with patience but to speak a word.” Juliet is begging her father to listen to her but she is saying it in a way that is polite because she doesn’t want to upset her father any more by shouting at him.
The idea of arranged marriages was extremely important in the time of Shakespeare. The father would find someone who had very high status and as much money as possible. Parents arranged the marriage, the bride and groom had no say in it at all.
A modern day audience would sympathise with Juliet because today daughters can have their own say, they don’t have to do what they are told. An audience in Shakespeare’s time would have reacted to this conflict with astonishment, because daughters were never supposed to be disobedient, especially to their fathers.
I think that the theme of conflict is very important in the play. If there wasn’t any conflict the play would be extremely boring to watch and it wouldn’t make you want to carry on watching it.
The violence and conflict in the play still appeals to modern day audiences because we can relate to what’s going on. However, the conflict in the play is different to the sorts of conflict that we would have between modern families because we don’t have arranged marriages and daughters don’t have to marry just to get high status. In any play, conflict is important so I think that any drama that has an exciting conflict in it will appeal to a modern day audience.