How does Shakespear dramatise scenes of love and hate in Act 1 Scene 5?

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Lizzie Seffer

How does Shakespeare dramatise the themes of love and hate in Act 1 Scene 5?

‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a play written by William Shakespeare. It is about two families have an extreme hatred for each one another. Romeo, from the Montague family, and Juliet, from the Capulet family, fall in love which causes tragic deaths in each family and finally the death of Romeo and Juliet themselves. In the prologue it describes Romeo and Juliet as “star crossed lovers”, and as the Elizabethans believed very strongly in fate and the stars, this part is a key sentence because they would know that Romeo and Juliet would definitely meet and definitely die. This intensifies the tragedy of the whole play.

The end of Act 1, Scene 4 is tense but at the start of Act 1, Scene 5 the tension is released and replaced by an uplifting party atmosphere. The ball is introduced by Lord Capulet saying:

“Welcome, gentlemen! Ladies that have toes

Unplagu’d with corns will walk bout with you.”

At the end of Act 1, Scene 4, Romeo talks about how he feels there is a “consequence yet hanging in the stars”. This makes the audience feel really tense and makes them wonder what is going to happen at that ball. They might ask themselves if he will die in this scene, as they know from the prologue that he will die eventually, but they don’t know when, so this really makes everything very tense. Then when Act 1, Scene 5 starts the tension is mostly released as Lord Capulet is very welcoming and it relaxes people a bit, but the audience might still have what Romeo said in the back of their minds, so the tension isn’t released completely. Lord Capulet says that the women who don’t have corns will be dancing, so all the women will dance as they don’t want anyone to think that they have corns. At this point in the scene, everything is quite relaxed and everyone is in a party mood, no one is really expecting anything bad to happen yet.

When Romeo sees Juliet for the first time, the audience knows that it is true love at first sight. They know this because he says:

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“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!

For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night”

This implies that Romeo never really loved Rosaline, as he is using a rhetorical question which means he has never loved before. He is using short sentences, which shows seriousness; this shows the audience that he is completely sure that he is in love with Juliet. He also uses the word “beauty” meaning that Juliet is the most beautiful person he has ever seen, her beauty is something he hasn’t come across before. This also shows the love towards Juliet. ...

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