Analyse the dramatic qualities of Act 1 scene 5 and show how this relates to Romeo and Juliet as a whole, focusing on Shakespeare(TM)s use of conflict as a theme. Explain how character is presented to the audience through interpreta

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Analyse the dramatic qualities of Act 1 scene 5 and show how this relates to Romeo and Juliet as a whole, focusing on Shakespeare’s use of conflict as a theme. Explain how character is presented to the audience through interpretation of character and action and describe how this may be influenced by the history and society of the time.

 One of the most popular plays by William Shakespeare is the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Although it is about four hundred years old, it is one of the best known stories ever told.

Romeo and Juliet tells a lot about the society and times in which it was written. By understanding the contrast between an orderly and disorderly one and the contrast between true love and the pretence of love it becomes possible to understand the play’s tragic quality. To the modern audience I think it often seems as though Romeo and Juliet are being punished for the behaviour of their parents. The play make a great deal more sense when it is understood that the two families had created a world where something as important as love could not exist and where people were afraid to go out into the streets of Verona, ‘Where civil hands makes civil hands unclean.’

The Prologue of Romeo and Juliet is highly valuable, because it immediately prepares the audience for the tragic events of the play: the conflict, love, hate, violence and irony of the play are conveyed in the use of language in the prologue. Such as ‘From forth the fatal loins of these two foes’. Here Shakespeare has used alliteration to emphasise how important fate is to the play as a whole.

The fact that the Prologue is written in sonnet form (the traditional style of a love poem, always fourteen lines long, divided into three sections of four lines, with the last two lines separate,) suggests strongly the continuous theme of love throughout the play. This however is contradicted by the fact that the sonnet is chanted in chorus, traditionally used in Ancient Greek tragedies. This shows Shakespeare’s love of theatre, so much that he uses traditional forms of theatre to enhance his own.

Moreover a chorus and sonnet would have been well known in Elizabethan times therefore Shakespeare’s audiences would recognise them without any delay. This would make Shakespeare’s plays a lot more popular.

We know conflict is a very important theme in the play because it is introduced in the first few lines of the Prologue, ‘From ancient grudge break to new mutiny’, it is also showed by the amount of conflict in the Prologue, ‘death-mark’d love’,’ fatal loins’, ‘parents rage’.  

Shakespeare also uses characterization and stage craft to inform the audience of the moral and social significance of the play. One thing I love about the Prologue is that it tells the audience it is a play, ‘where we lay our scene’, obviously we know it is a play but I like the fact that Shakespeare is not trying to pretend that it is real. ‘Is now the two hours traffic of our stage.’

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When we first see Romeo he talks of his unrequited love for a character named Rosaline, nevertheless when Romeo first sees Juliet at Capulet’s party he asks the question ‘Did my heart love till now? Forswear it sight? – For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night’. So straight away Romeo has gone from being in love with one woman (Rosaline) to another (Juliet), this is one of the reasons Romeo’s love is questioned. Furthermore we have to ask the question, what does this say about Romeo? How can he fall in love after just glimpsing at a ...

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