Romeo and Juliet is a highly dramatic love story written by William Shakespeare in 1597

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Shakespeare Assignment

Romeo and Juliet is a highly dramatic love story written by William Shakespeare in 1597, the Elizabethan era. At this time in England women had no social or political power, men controlled women totally. Women were domestic servants and were left to bring up the children. The story of Romeo and Juliet is about two families, Capulet and Montague, Juliet being a Capulet and Romeo a Montague. The two families hate each other, there is a huge family feud between them, and Romeo and Juliet fall in love and get married without anyone knowing apart from Juliet’s caring Nurse, this follows on to cause a lot of trouble. Shakespeare adapted this story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who was a writer from Rome.

Shakespeare chose place a fight at the beginning to emphasise that the play is about hatred. Shakespeare also wanted to make the audience feel emotions to foreground the play. Shakespeare wants the audience to know that there is a lot of anger between the two families. At the beginning the servants start the fight because they are not as important as the family. In the fight Sampson, a Montague servant, bites his thumb at Abraham, a Capulet  “I do bite my thumb sir”. At this time in England to bite your thumb at someone was a big insult, the equivalent to putting a finger up to someone.

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Tybalt is very aggressive at he beginning of the play; he is foregrounded because later on in the play he starts the fight. The audience would be very gripped and concentrated for the rest of the play, this opening was to warm the audience that the two families are enemies.

In act three scenes 1 Mercutio is killed by Tybalt due to the family feuds. The language of violence does not reflect mercutio at the beginning, “O calm dishonourable, vile submission; Alla staccato carries it away! Tybalt, you rat catcher, will you walk?”

These words spoken by Mercutio clearly state ...

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