Romeo and Juliet has been described as a play of contrasts: love and hate, joy and sorrow, light and dark, youth and age, life and death. Explore the ways in which the characters of Tybalt and Mercutio are contrasted in the play.

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Romeo and Juliet has been described as a play of contrasts: love and hate, joy and sorrow, light and dark, youth and age, life and death. Explore the ways in which the characters of Tybalt and Mercutio are contrasted in the play.

Romeo and Juliet is a love story full of contrasts: love and hate; joy and sorrow; light and dark and Montagues and Capulets. The main contrast is between the Montagues and the Capulets; the audience would know from the prologue that there would be a contrast, “From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.” This give the audience an idea of how the families became such bitter enemies; this ‘grudge’ results in five innocent youths dying, two of whom are Mercutio and Tybalt. The character Tybalt is based on a character from Arthur Brooke’s poem, where as Mercutio was Shakespeare’s own creation, to counteract possibly with the villainous Tybalt.  

Tybalt and Mercutio do not actually meet onstage until Act 3 Scene 1 when they fight; Shakespeare could have done this with the intention that when it came to them meeting it would be more dramatic. Therefore the audience see the characters develop and are able to imagine what would happen if they did ever meet. They are contrasting characters, Tybalt is aggressive; “I hate the word,/ As I hate hell,” this shows that he does not want to make peace with the Montagues even though he does not know why they hate each other. Whereas Mercutio fights when he thinks it is necessary, because Romeo was not fighting his side, “Will you pluck your sword out of his pilcher by the ears?” This shows how they both fight for something they think is right. On the contrary, both men believe that family honour is important and they will risk their lives and kill to support the family name, “To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.” Shakespeare suggests that Tybalt believes the family name to be so important that he would kill someone and would not feel remotely upset.

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Tybalt does not feature much in the play compared to Mercutio; who says quite a lot, nevertheless the audience still know a great deal about Tybalt’s personality. The first impressions of Tybalt show him as an aggressive man, “Look upon thy death” this shows him as antagonistic, this is because “thy death” demonstrates to the audience that Tybalt is a man who does not mind if people who are from the house of Montague die. Therefore our first impressions of Tybalt are as a destructive person who is seen by the audience as aggressive because he talks about hell, ...

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