Romeo and Juliet's effectiveness as drama

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Is Romeo and Juliet an effective piece of drama?

One of Shakespeare’s earlier plays, Romeo and Juliet never achieved a standing as one of the four ‘greats’; it was his first fictional tragedy and was written with ‘poetic naivety’. Nevertheless, the purpose of this essay will be to assess what merits it does have as well as those it doesn’t.

Firstly, the plot: of the seven basic stories agreed on by most drama commentators this is ‘the lovers’; and the universal appeal of this subject makes it a pretty secure crowd-puller. There are plenty of diversions from this feminine foundation – the play is rather bare where comic interludes are concerned but there is plenty of violence, Tybalt and Romeo’s fight the prevalent example. Rather disappointingly, Shakespeare didn’t actually come up with the basic plot to this script: it was a common yarn which can be traced back to Luigi Da Porto in 1530. Shakespeare’s adaptation has many original characters, Benvolio and Mercutio for example, but this blatant plagiarism (which wasn’t a crime in the 17th century) is a let-down to modern audiences.

Quite inventively for the period Shakespeare’s play has two protagonists (Romeo and Juliet) a technique which is effective in a number of ways: the events can be revealed from the perspective of both characters (e.g. if Juliet isn’t in a particular scene we still have Romeo to empathize with), and viewers of both sexes have a personality to identify by. Romeo matures as a person throughout, progressing from his childish attachment to Rosaline (‘the precious treasure of his eyesight’) – who decides to live in chastity (what she told him, anyway) – to the more subtle metaphors of his affection to Juliet (‘doth enrich the hand of yonder knight’; which sounds as if he’s making more of an effort to say the same thing); and who’s strengthened love towards Juliet is enough for suicide, whereas the loss of Rosaline, albeit in a different fashion*, provoked a scene’s worth of moping. Maybe the gradual improvement of a character’s qualities as opposed to the slow deterioration of Lear and Macbeth is what detracts from R+J’s standing as a ‘great’ tragedy; or maybe the more interesting deaths of the former two emphasize the event of their expiring and clarify the genre.

Juliet undergoes less of a transition, as we only see her romantic traits focused on one man (‘parting is such sweet sorrow’), but there is obviously a decline in her situation as she is rejected by her parents (‘do as thou wilt, for I’ll have done with thee’) and an augmentation when she repents later (‘this is as ‘t should be’), but probably not up to the same level as before: she has exposed their true feelings towards her in the previous argument. Hers being a fatality of greater pain and irony (therefore interest) we might be tempted to be affected most by it; this gradual increase of sorrow at mortalities (Tybalt, Romeo, Juliet) counteracts the decrease brought on by the frequency of them.

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The two characters’ feelings for each-other form the basis for the whole play (somewhat inferred in the title); and a close analysis of the metaphors used in their contact reveals Romeo to be the most passionate, comparing her to a jewel (‘doth enrich the hand of yonder knight’); the sky’s earring (or the moon); ‘for earth too dear’; and, finally, a divinity (‘if I profane with my unworthiest hand’), while Juliet imagines the former as a flower (‘a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’); (‘bud of love’). Alternatively, Juliet could be the most realistic of the ...

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