Abram and Barthsar are servants of the house of Montague’s. Sampson and Gregory meet them. Sampson insults Abram by biting his thumb at him; this would have been seen as a great insult and a provocative action. Abram does not retaliate at this point, which shows cowardice and makes it look like he is failing his family. When Abram asked Sampson if he had bit his thumb at him, Sampson replied, “No, sir, I’d do not bite my thumb at you, sir... But I do bite my thumb.” However when Benvolio enters, the men begin to fight. This exemplifies that both families are aggressive towards each other. Further on, this part of the scene is also made dramatically effective because when Abram questioned Sampson, there is a build up of tension amongst the audience.
Benvolio is the cousin of Romeo and a member of the Montague’s family. T first impression of Benvolio is that he is quite intelligent. He knows better than to fight in a public place because there would have been bad consequences for both families. He shouts “part, fools!” to break up the fight and Tybalt enters, the cousin of Juliet. Tybalt characters juxtaposes with Benvolio because Benvolio believes in keeping peace, whereas Tybalt only thinks about killing his enemies and is full of hate. This can be seen in the tone of the characters lines “what, art thou drawn among these heartless hinds? Turn thee Benvolio look upon thy death” Shakespeare shows us that Tybalt is a spiteful character with an aggressive attitude. More over Shakespeare creates tension trough the theme of hatred and the audience may see Tybalt as a threat to peace, this again is very dramatic.
When the prince enters, the tension builds up again because the audience can tell that he is extremely angry. The prince refers to the men in both families as beats “what, ho! You men, you beasts...” this is a metaphor to show that he sees them as animals with no control of their actions. The prince speech is ironic because he threatens the families with death, and one member of each family dies, Romeo and Juliet, but neither of them where involved in fighting.
When the audience first meet Romeo, he comes across a quite distant character because he recites pottery of love. Him not being involved with the fight shows he does not have a nature as violent as some of friends. Romeo told Benvolio that he was sad and days seem longer because he is in love with a girl that doesn’t love him back. Shakespeare uses metaphors “love is a smoke raised with fumes of sighs.” This shows that he is lost in love and talking nonsense about his passion. Shakespeare also uses oxymoron’s “cold fire” and “sick health” to show the Romeos state of confusion caused by love. “Cold fire,” for example, this shows Romeos thoughts of passion have been somewhat dampened by the fact he is not loved back. This is the first introduction of the key theme love, which is really important in the play. The introduction of the love theme is dramatic because it is very passionate a heartbreaking and grabs the attention of the audience.
Consequently, Act 1 scene 1 is an intriguing scene because of the tension built up by the different themes. Shakespeare engages the audience by the aggressive and impulsive attitude of the characters. However we are made to empathise with the love struck Romeo, which makes this episode ‘dramatically effective’ and lively.