Benvolio is a nephew to lord and lady Montague and cousin and friend to Romeo. His name which means well wisher reflects to some degree his role in the play as a loyal friend and a peace maker. We first see him at the petrol station and straight away we can see that he is a peace maker because he tries to stop the fighting “part fools! Put up your swords. You know not what you do”. We then see him being a loyal friend and trying to help Romeo get over his love sick feelings for Rosaline. He is then seen at the beach fight and he is trying to get tybalt and mercutio to reason without fighting. ”either withdraw unto some private place, or reason coldly of your grievances, or else depart”. After Romeo has killed tybalt Benvolio tells him to run away “Romeo away be gone” or he will be killed by the prince “the prince will doom thee death”. He also tries to defend Romeo in front of the prince by saying that Romeo didn’t want to fight but Tybalt pressured him into fighting.
Mercutio is Romeos best friend and kinsman to the prince he is also a windup and makes things worse for everyone including himself. He is the type of person who likes to turn things into a joke. Although we hardly see him during the play he plays a big part in how the play turns out, because if tybalt hadn’t killed mercutio then Romeo wouldn’t have gone after tybalt and wouldn’t have been banished from Verona. Therefore Juliet would not have gone to the prince for the potion and Romeo wouldn’t have thought that Juliet was dead and he wouldn’t have killed himself and Juliet wouldn’t have killed herself.
Tybalt is a nephew to lord and lady Capulet and a cousin to Juliet. He also has a big impact on the outcome of the play. Though the play we see his angry, resentful and stubborn nature. We first see him in the petrol station and straightaway we can see that he is an angry person who takes feud to his heart “peace I hate the word as I hate hell all Montague’s and thee”. We then see him angry again at the ball where he’s sees Romeo and wants to kill him “by the stock and honor of my kin to strike him dead I hold it not a sin”. But then he gets into an argument with lord Capulet who calls him a “saucy boy” because lord Capulet don’t see Romeo as a threat and don’t want his party ruined. We then see him on the beach arguing with mercutio and then he wants to fight Romeo, but Romeo backs off because he is married to Juliet therefore he see tybalt as family “I see you knowest me not”. Tybalt then ends up fighting mercutio and when Romeo tries to stop the fighting tybalt sneakily stabs mercutio under Romeos arm.
To understand the themes I will discuss how Shakespeare puts juxtaposition next to each other.
At the beginning of the play we have a fight scene in a public place and we see the two caplets servants Sampson and Gregory and the two Montague’s servants Abraham and Balthazar. A spirited exchange of vulgar jokes between the servants opens the play and immediately likes sex with conflict. In their bawdy quarrel, the servants references to “tool” and “naked weapon” together with repeated images of striking and thrusting, illustrate how images of love and sex are intertwined with violence and death and will continue to be throughout the play. The sudden change from the comedy that you see in the begging of the play with the servants to a potentially life threatening situation shows the rapidly changing pace that drives the action for the rest of the play. Benvolio tries to act as a peace maker by dividing the servants but the quick tempered “fiery tybalt” forces him to draw his sword, and the atmosphere changes from harmony to hatred within a few lines. Then it goes on to when Romeo and Juliet first meet and kiss, and at the same time Tybalt see Romeo and wants to kill him, and then Romeo and Juliet get married. And then it goes onto the fight scene where tybalt wants to fight Romeo but Romeo backs down because he is married to Juliet so mercutio fights in order to save Romeos honor. Romeo tries to stop the fight but tybalt sneakily stabs mercutio under Romeos arm and just before he dies he curses both of there houses “a plague o’ both your houses”. Romeo then feels guilty and takes revenge on tybalt and kills him and gets banished from Verona. We then see Romeo and Juliet discussing when they are going to see each other again, And then after Romeo is gone Juliet is told that she is going to marry Paris the next day and goes to the friar for help this is when he gives her the potion that makes her look dead where really she is in a deep sleep. We then see Romeo kill himself and Juliet wake up and kill herself. Then the families realize why there loved ones died and decided that it was time to stop the feud and become friends.
I will now look at the use of language and how it is presented.
In the play we see that Tybalt is a very aggressive person and a trouble maker, this is implied by the things that he says and does like in the petrol station “turn thee Benvolio! Look upon thy death” Tybalt is also a very sly person and Shakespeare suggest this when he says that tybalt stabbed mercutio under Romeos arm. Where as Benvolio comes across as a peacemaker this is shown when he tries to brake up the fights “part fools put up your swords” and “I do but keep the peace”. Mercutio we can tell is assertive and likes to make situations worse “Make it a word and a blow” and “Could you not take some occasion without giving”. Romeo first came across as a sweet lovesick boy who just wants to be loved by the girl that he is in love with. But when Tybalt kills mercutio he changes and turns evil and aggressive “my very friend” and then after he kills Tybalt he says “for mercutios soul”.
I will now look at how the conflict is presented on stage.
The first performance of Romeo and Juliet took place in the autumn/winter of 1595, when the playhouses reopened for the first time after a sustained outbreak of the plague had forced the authorities to close all the playhouses in London in January 1593. During this period, over 100,000 people in London alone died from the disease, and Shakespeare emphasizes the relevance of the plague for his audience by using it in Romeo and Juliet to prevent friar Laurence’s message from reaching Romeo in Mantua. The first performance was at the playhouse called the theatre where Shakespeare and his company the lord chamberlain’s men where based until 1597. In the first performance of Romeo and Juliet, Richard Burbage, the company’s leading actor who was in his min-twenties, played Romeo. Juliet was played by master Robert goffe, young boy actors often played female roles because woman did not legally appear on stage until the late 17th century.
The fights and arguments that were played on stage would have had to be made to look real. When the play first came out in 1594 they didn’t have much scenery that just had simple things like a chair and a table on stage. Also the characters would have had to use a lot of facial expressions to show that they were angry or being serious. Also all the conflict that goes on during that play is to do with the “ancient grudge” that goes on between the two families and if there was no feus then there would be no conflict in the play. The conflict is always presented as a fight or an argument and they use props such as swords and pretend poison bottles.
Conclusion
The play includes an important message about social violence because as the poem states “civil blood makes civil hands unclean” the conflict that occurred between the two families was pointless because as we found out with Romeo and Juliet life is too short to hold a grudge because it just brings tragedy and death. The feud could have been solved a long time ago because nobody can remember what it was about or even why it started. It took the two families losing loved ones and the prince and the other citizens of Verona to suffer because of the feud before the families realized that there was no point in the feud in the first place.
Romeo and Juliet is still a very much loved play because it still relates to people that are forbidden to marry certain people maybe because of there race or maybe because there is a feud going on between families like Romeo and Juliet. It still relates to people all over the world because there are a lot of fights and arguments going on that could be resolved with a quiet talk but people like to prove them selves to be the better person so things never get solved. The play also shows there is more to life than violence and the values of love and hate can be very strong.