Shakespeare wants to get across the eight key themes to his audience. These are violence, passion, vengeance, forgiveness, despair, hope, love and death. I think that in a way all of these things are connected to each other. The three themes that I think are the most important are violence, love and forgiveness.
I think violence is one of the most important because it opens and ends the play. Tybalt is the most violent, he loves to fight, “What draw and talk of peace.” This implies that there is fighting throughout the play and Tybalt is always involved. Tybalt’s lust for violence leads to his death at the end of the play.
Love is also an important theme because it balances the play because half of the play is about violence but the other half is about love for instance Juliet says “If that thy bent of love be honorable thy purpose marriage, send me word tomorrow.” This created an image that if its true love then they must get married, it also suggests that they have to be together. She says this because she loves him and wants to marry Romeo.
Forgiveness is another important theme because it gives a reputation to the person who forgives. In the play Juliet forgives Romeo for killing Tybalt, this shows that she is willing to forgive Romeo for things that he has done because she loves him too much.
Friars and monks are my next topic. They fit into the play because Friar Lawrence is a priest. They are like priests, they know a lot about plants, medicines, nature, life and potions and they are also religious. Friar Lawrence who’s in the play is a Roman Catholic, he listens to people’s confessions and finally he is celibate.
Moreover I will write about marriage. Marriage fits into the play because if Juliet didn’t have to marry Paris and Juliet could chose who she wanted to marry then she wouldn’t have had to marry Romeo in secret. They were married at a young age; boys were legal to marry at 14, whereas girls are legal to marry at 12. Their fathers chose who they had to marry. They didn’t marry for love they married for money and property. Every girl expected to have children. Children were the property of their parents until married, when they became the property of their husbands. Divorcing was difficult as only kings could apply to the pope.
I strongly feel that Friar Lawrence is to blame for “Romeo and Juliet’s” death, however he doesn’t appear until Act 2 Scene 3. Friar Lawrence’s first speech is a soliloquy. A soliloquy is a long paragraph that is spoken to the audience. He is first seen half and hour into the play. In his first appearance he talks about nature, medicine, potion, religion, life, death, good and evil. He speaks in rhyming couplets, example his first line ends “night” and his second line ends in “light”. Also he speaks in iambic pentameter, this is 10 beats per bar. He does all of these things to make his sound clever he wants to show off. He speaks to Romeo in riddles. He questions Romeo about Rosaline and why he wants to marry Juliet. Friar Lawrence is like a father to Romeo.
Friar Lawrence is a fransiscan monk, which means he is close to nature. Francis the patrent saint of animals and plant. In this soliloquy he talks about nature ”in plants, herbs, stones and their true qualities”, this means plants have good qualities about them. For medicine and poison “with baleful weeds and precious juiced flowers”, this means that his flowers are precious to him. Furthermore he talks about religion “now ere the sun advance his burning eye”, this is personification, it’s saying the sun is God. He also talks about the good and the evil “virtue itself turns vice being misapplied and vice sometime by action dignified”, this means that if you do something bad to someone good everything turns nasty. Finally he talks about life and death “the earth that’s natures mother is her tomb, what is her burying grave, that is her womb”, this means its like the circle of life, when you die you rot.
My next topic is the relationship between Friar Lawrence and Romeo. At the start of the scene he calls him “father”, which expresses they have a good relationship. There are several words throughout the play which also express they have a good relationship. Some of them are “young son”, “our Romeo”, “good son” and “blessed man”. Friar Lawrence is concerned about Romeo all the time. He acts like a spiritual dad. Romeo trusts Friar Lawrence and he can share his personal things with him, he chooses to tell Friar Lawrence everything about Juliet rather than his father.
The next big speech in the play is when Friar Lawrence is telling Romeo off about Juliet and Rosaline. “Is Rosaline, that thou didst love so dear, so soon forsaken”, Friar Lawrence is asking Romeo if he has forgotten Rosaline already. Next he says, “Young men’s love then lies not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes”, in this he is telling him that he is lusting after Juliet. “What a deal of brine hath washed thy shallow cheeks for Rosaline!” Friar Lawrence asked Romeo if he was upset (cried) when he split up with Rosaline. “How much salt water thrown away in waste”, how long did you cry for when you split up with her? After this he says, “Lo here upon thy cheek the stain cloth sit of an old tear that is not washed off yet”, Friar Lawrence is asking Romeo if he still loves Rosaline. “Thou and these woes were all for Rosaline. And art thou changed?” he is saying that Romeo had troubles when he was with Rosaline, so why try again with someone else.
Next I am going to talk about why Friar Lawrence married “Romeo and Juliet”. The main reason why Friar Lawrence marries “Romeo and Juliet” is because he thinks that once they were married the feud between the two families would not continue. Friar Lawrence doesn’t think about what he is doing and marries “Romeo and Juliet”.
I will now be writing about why Romeo is banished, how he feels, the good advice that Friar Lawrence gives and the bad advice he gives to Romeo. This happens in Act 3 Scene 3. When Romeo was told that he was going to be banished he was upset because he was never going to see Juliet again. Friar Lawrence tells Romeo he is going to be ok and tells him to go and spend the night with Juliet. “Go get thee to thy love as was decreed, ascend her chamber, hence and comfort her” this is the bad advice he gives to Romeo, but you can’t have one without the other. Friar Lawrence’s good advice is that he tells Romeo that he should go and when it is safe to come back he will be informed. “Where thou shalt live till we can find a time to blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends, beg pardon of the Prince, and call thee back with twenty hundred thousand times more joy”.
In Act 4 Scene 1, I will be writing about why Juliet wants to commit suicide, how Friar Lawrence talks her out of it, what his plan is and who it will benefit the most. Firstly Juliet commits suicide because she can’t take life without Romeo and Tybalt. Friar Lawrence tells Juliet that he will think of a plan. His plan is that he gives Juliet a potion and she goes to bed alone, she drinks the potion and it makes her look dead. “Take thou this vial, being then in bed, and this distilling liquor drink thou off”. She will then be placed in the same ancient vault where all of the Capulets lie will write to Romeo and tell him the plan and he will come to pick her up.
I think that Shakespeare put Friar Lawrence into the play because he communicates with both families and try’s to stop the feud between the two families.
