In this essay I will be writing a character study of Romeo.

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Sagar Solgama 11 P                                                             English Essay: Romeo and Juliet        

  In this essay I will be writing a character study of Romeo. It will also be involving a response to dramatic features of the text and showing understanding of the author’s language and explain how Romeo will be present to a audience through interpretation of action and language and understanding the literary and theatrical contexts.

Shakespeare tightens dramatic tension as he fills the play with oppositions: Montague’s versus Capulets, love versus hate, life versus death, and youth versus age. The language of the play reflects these oppositions. Shakespeare fills the play with dramatic irony: characters are unaware of events or of the real meaning of what is said to them. E.g. Tybalt does not know that Romeo has become his Kinsman; Mercutio never learns of Juliet’s existence. As Capulet promises Juliet to Paris, the audience knows she is at that moment in bed with Romeo. Most cruelly, Romeo, about to kill himself, is unaware that Juliet lives. Romeo and Juliet are not the conventional characters of tragedy: kings or mighty warriors. They are young, innocent and powerless. The play conveys the sense of loss and waste that is at the heart of all tragedy.

   It contains a dazzling variety of language registers. Its stylistic divers city can be seen by simply listing a few of its types: lyrical poetry, witty and sophisticated wordplay in both prose and verse, highly patterned rhyme and rhythm, colloquial language literary and classical references, violent exclamations, artificial conceits and sincere expressions of love, sonnets, hyperbole and impassioned rhetoric.

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One of the most powerful aspects of Romeo and Juliet is the language. The characters curse, vow oaths, banishes each other, and generally plays with the language through overuse of action verbs. In addition, the play is saturated with the use of oxymoron’s, puns, paradoxes, and double entendres. Even the use of names is called into question, with Juliet asking what is in the name Romeo that denies her the right to love him.

 

Romeo does indeed; experience a love of such purity and such passion that kills him when he believes the object of his ...

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