Character’s actions and words tell us a lot about conflict in Romeo and Juliet. I have chosen to explore Romeo, Juliet and Tybalt’s actions.
Romeo’s name suggests the word romance so we can tell he will have a connection with love through the play. In Act 1scene 1, Romeo is moaning about not having his love for Rosaline requited to Benvolio. ‘Griefs of mine own lie heavy in my breast.’ (pg 53, line 180) Shakespeare uses the word ‘grief’ to show the reader just how despairing Romeo is feeling. The fact that they are heavy griefs must mean love is important to Romeo. Shakespeare has used dramatic language to show how little Romeo cares for anything else; he never gets involved in fights between the families at the start of the play. When Romeo turns up at the Capulet party disguised, when he is a Montague he wants to see Rosaline but falls in love with Juliet instead, ‘thy swan a crow’ a crow is ugly while a swan is pretty and graceful. Conflict is shown by how fickle Romeo is when in love he seems to divert his attention very quickly. However, by the end of the play Romeo takes part in physical conflict as he is provoked by Tybalt. After killing Tybalt he is then banished from Verona. He shows us how he feels in a soliloquy, ‘There is no world without Verona walls,’ Romeo loves his wife, Juliet, and feels without there is no meaning to life. To Romeo here, walls are a barrier whereas before in the play he found them easy to climb other. So we can see he has encountered internal conflict along the way.
When we read Juliet’s lines we have to remember that she is young and unmarried so according to Verona law is not allowed to leave her household but is told everything by the Nurse. This causes a lot of internal conflict. ‘O she is lame, love’s heralds should be thoughts.’ Romeo and Juliet voice their thoughts a lot by using the semantic field of religion for example, ‘heralds’ could refer to the hosts of angels in heaven. Conflict is reflected in the way Romeo and Juliet are in trouble with the law. The Nurse causes conflict for Juliet by having maternal feelings for her that compete with Lady Capulets. This makes it hard for Juliet to decide who to please. Lady Capulet says to Juliet: ‘We must talk in secret. Nurse come back again,’
Later on in the play, Juliet learns not to trust the nurse entirely as when she first meets Romeo at the party the Nurse doesn’t see anything and Juliet chooses not to mention it. We see Juliet mature more and more throughout the play as she has to stand on her own more and more. The reader will feel sympathy for Juliet who will be denounced by her Father if he found out about her marriage. Lord Capulet ultimately wants Juliet to marry Paris and arranges for their marriage just a few days after she has been wedded to Romeo. Lord Capulet wants Juliet to marry Paris as he is rich, ‘The most you sought was her promotion.’ Conflict is shown by the fact that a Father should love his daughter but LC needs her for money. When she disobeys, he insults her by calling her ‘baggage’ and ‘tallow face’. The reader feels sympathy for both Juliet but also her Father because he has spent so much time to shape Paris into a man worth his daughter and she has had a hard time. Even death creates conflict for Juliet as Romeo hasn’t left any poison in the bottle or on his lips. Juliet’s only friend is the dagger, ‘happy dagger’. By this phrase we see that Juliet has a conflicted mind as she thinks opposite to us. A normal person wouldn’t think of a dagger as a lovely object. The dagger is a personified object to make it more real to the reader.
