On the other hand in an entire contrast, Tybalt enters the scene as a cold blooded character; his presence changes the whole mood and atmosphere of the whole scene on stage. Ironically, just after Romeo has talked about loving and caring feelings towards Juliet also about how beautiful she is.
Tybalt has jus entered and in a complete contrast of dialogue, his first words are: “This, by his voice, should be a Montague. Fetch me my rapier boy what dares the slave”. Shakespeare has intentionally put these two characters language together to make us see that how both characters are staged in this scene.
Romeo enters disguised with a mask, almost a hint of mysteriousness in him, whereas Tybalt enters already fuming and full of wrath.
The scene starts off uplifting and jovial. The servants are cleaning and preparing for the festivity. Romeo enters in a calm atmosphere, he brings a joyful presence towards the beginning of the scene and the atmosphere stays uplifting. There is lots of music, lots of dancing and very merry imaging in the scene. The thing that strikes most about the scene and the thing that also stands out the most is when you see the characters speaking after one another.
We, being the audience, very quickly hear Romeo’s voice and then hear Tybalt’s voice straight after but they speak about different things.
Romeo talks about love, this is shown when he says worlds such as: “bright” and “enrich”. These are positive images portraying light and soft images. As members of the audience, we can see that Romeo is eager to love whereas Tybalt is eager to hate.
In a gigantic contrast Tybalt talks about killing. This is shown when he says quote words such as: “rapier” and “slave”. Tybalt is eager to kill. Romeo speaks soft and calm while Tybalt’s voice is full of anger and rage; he speaks in a rather rude manner.
“Rapier”: this is a key word in this scene because we can see how Tybalt speaks and how language is portrayed in this scene. Tybalt is very determined to fight Romeo even though he has hardly known him.
The audience therefore can see how eager he is to slay innocent Romeo as the innocent and Tybalt as the villain. To call Romeo a “villain” is very ironic because, in actual fact Tybalt is the “villain” as he is eager to kill Romeo and to call him a villain is clearly absurd.
Also, “bright” is another keyword in this scene because we can see how Romeo speaks: calmer, loving and speaks in a complete contrast to Tybalt.
Romeo speaks metaphorically here; almost in a sonnet form. This is shown when he says: “Have not saint’s lips. And holy palmers to”, Romeo is talking about light, whereas Tybalt talks in a dark presence and changes the whole atmosphere and causes a mass conflict and friction between the characters.
Shakespeare has used a large amount contrast and irony because, he jumps from love to hate all the time and this is shown when Romeo & Tybalt’s lines are deliberately put together. In doing this, Shakespeare had let the audience know about the characters feelings emotions towards to each other, whilst Romeo wants to love, but in a complete contrast Tybalt wants to hate.
We could imagine this on stage, where Romeo could have white light shining down at him and calm music being played in the background, which creates a good impression on the audience.
Tybalt can stand with a cigar in his hand and a sword in the other one. He could have dark light shining on him and he can have fast, depressing music in the background.
From this essay we can distinguish that there is a huge contrast between these two characters. Shakespeare purposely put certain lines together, to make us members of the audience acknowledge about the characters. Doing this we can see that Romeo is: calm, loving and passionate, whereas Tybalt is angry, impatient, egotistic and selfish. Revenge, hatred and rage is clearly shown from Tybalt and then love and peace from Romeo.
In this essay we talked about stagecraft, subject and theme, characters, language, irony and of course contrast. We can also see the characters motivation that may lead to unexpected events that occur in up coming scenes.
The scene started off jovial and uplifting but, as the scene gradually continued, we unpacked Tybalt and Romeo to see how we can perceive them now. As members of the audience, we can acknowledge that there is a huge contrast between the both characters.
From this essay I feel that Shakespeare has deliberately put these two lines together to make us see the huge contrast that exists from the scene, and how the other topics that I talked about integrated in to this essay.
Thinking back to the question I was asked to talk about: “Thinking about characters of Tybalt, Romeo and Juliet; discuss the contrast in act 1 scene 5.” I feel I have definitely discussed the question.
