At a masked ball held at the house of the Capulet’s, where Romeo is not welcome, Romeo and Juliet meet and instantly fall in love. But, unfortunately, because of their family histories they are nothing but “star-crossed lovers”.
However they were in love and nothing could stop this so they turned to Friar Lawrence, who saw this match as a means to ending the bloody feud, agreed to marry the young couple. The day after the secret marriage Romeo and his friend Mercutio encounter Juliet’s cousin, Tybalt. Unfortunately a fight occurs, and when Tybalt slays Mercutio, Romeo in turn slays Tybalt. For this offence Romeo is banished from Verona.
Juliet seeks Friar Lawrence for help, he comes up with a plan of poison, which would make her seem dead to her family so she cannot marry Paris. While this is taking place Friar Lawrence would have sent a message to Romeo telling him about Juliet taking the poison to fool her family. This way they could be together.
Unfortunately the plan doesn’t go the way it should have. Romeo returns to find Juliet “dead”, when really she is in nothing but a deep sleep. The message from Friar Lawrence never reached Romeo, because of a plague.
When Romeo sees Juliet, he is distraught and takes his own life, minutes later Juliet awakes realising what Romeo has done and decides to take her life as well.
The play is a romantic tragedy, simply because all off the tragedies present, the most obvious one being the most unfortunate pairing, which alone is catastrophic.
Another tragedy is that there were many deaths. The most unfortunate tragic death; many could say was the death of Mercutio. This being because he doesn’t belong to either family; he was a friend of the Princes. This isn’t the only tragic death in the play. Romeo and Juliet’s deaths are also tragic, and could both of been prevented if fate wasn’t against them.
Love is the plays most important theme. The play focuses on romantic love, specifically the intense passion that springs up at first sight between Romeo and Juliet.
In Romeo and Juliet, love is a violent, ecstatic, overpowering force that supersedes all other values, loyalties, and emotions. Love in the play causes violence.
Act 3 Scene 1 is the part of the play that builds the tension, which is the most important part of the play because it makes it exciting to the audience.
Main Part
Shakespeare uses dramatic devices within the scene to interest, involve and affect the audience.
At the start of Act 3 Scene 1 the methods Shakespeare uses to create the mood and the atmosphere is the build up of tension first of all between Benvolio and Mercutio.
Act 3 scene 1 starts with Benvolio giving his words of wisdom. The opening line of the scene is of Benvolio saying “let’s retire”. This means that he wants to remove himself and Mercutio from the public place. “The day is hot”, Benvolio means that it is hot and he knows that tempers fray in the heat and he doesn’t want the day to end up in a fight. He is warning Mercutio and the audience of what may happen if his advice isn’t listened to. This makes the audience immediately assume something bad will happen and his advice will be overturned. This is obviously what will happen because if everyone did as Benvolio says then there would be no plot.
Hot headed Mercutio is taunting Benvolio because of his sensibility. Mercutio sees this as nothing more then some light-hearted fun. In line 10 Benvolio asks Mercutio “Am I like such a fellow?” – “Am I really like that?” from this the tormenting continues.
In line 12 Mercutio uses close word play on ‘mood’ to humour the audience, this shows how clever with language Mercutio is. Already the tension is building between Benvolio and Mercutio, mainly from Mercutio, and he hasn’t even met the enemy yet.
Mercutio is extremely talented in the way that he can talk at length and make argument in many ways. Shakespeare has created an angry atmosphere. He feels there needs to be a change of Mercutio and Benvolio bickering so he introduces Tybalt into the scene.
Benvolio says “By my head, here comes the Capulets.” This means ‘Oh My God!’, this to him is the worst that could possibly happen. Mercutio replies with “By my heal, I care not.” Mercutio is in the fighting mood, he is arrogant, aggressive and flippant.
Tybalt addresses Mercutio and Benvolio as “Gentlemen...” he starts off being reasonable, polite, and calm and in no way at all aggressive.
Mercutio reacts by making it into what was not intended. He is stirring and has immediately found his next victim to torment. Mercutio is the first to introduce a physical idea, being “blow”.
Tybalt makes it clear that he would only fight Mercutio if there was a reason to do so. “You shall find me apt enough to that, sir, and you will give me an occasion,” Tybalt keeps calm and even refers to Benvolio as ‘sir’, so we can see from what has happened so far in this scene: we cannot fault Tybalt , he is only there for Romeo, who dared to be at a ‘Capulet Ball’.
Tybalt goes on to ask Mercutio “… thou consortest with Romeo.” Meaning is Mercutio friendly with Romeo, but yet again Mercutio deliberately takes it the wrong way and pretends to be offended. He says Tybalt is referring to him as a ‘minstrel’; musician, which would have been offensive if that was what Tybalt was portraying. Even though it was obvious Tybalt meant no harm, Mercutio kept pushing it.
Shakespeare has managed to create a huge amount of tension at the start of this scene.
When Romeo arrives on the scene it is obvious someone id going to be killed because of the anger between Mercutio and Tybalt already and Romeo is ‘the man’ Tybalt is after. We could see from the start of the scene that something was going to go down. The light heartedness at the beginning of the scene caused the anticipation for what would happen later on in the scene.
The previous scene of Romeo and Juliet was all about love, whereas this scene is action packed with male fighting. The moods contrast well this one being angry and more dynamic and the previous one having a romantic atmosphere. Shakespeare has made it love and then to hate, so quickly, making it more dramatic. Everyone knows that this is the beginning of the end for Romeo.
This scene has links to previous events in the play, one being the feud between the Montague’s and the Capulet’s which links to the feud between Mercutio and Benvolio, then Mercutio and Tybalt and finally Tybalt and Romeo. Another link is that the Prince gives a warning to Romeo about keeping peace and this is ignored likewise Benvolio gives a warning to Mercutio telling them to retire and go home or else there will be a brawl but he was again ignored and the worse that could happen, happened.
Shakespeare uses dramatic irony within the scene. This is clear in line 66 when Romeo says, “But love thee better than thou canst devise.” Romeo is trying to say that he can’t fight him because he loves him, he is family now and id married to his cousin. Unfortunately Tybalt doesn’t understand and still wants revenge, when all Romeo wants is peace.
There is conflict in the play between various characters which has an impact on the audience.
At the start of the scene there was conflict between Benvolio and Mercutio, which was a bit of fun and therefore would have humoured the audience. There is also conflict between Mercutio and Tybalt which would have built up tension for the audience.
The most important conflict being, between Tybalt and Romeo, which would have been the action for the audience. Tybalt always said he would get revenge, but we forgot about that.
There is a dramatic impact of entrances and exits. Shakespeare introduces characters when the plot needs furthering.
Mercutio uses gallous humour in line 94 when he says, “Ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man.” Mercutio is telling jokes and making the audience laugh even when he is dieing. Mercutio being killed is the death of the humour in the play. Now the humour is left to the Nurse which slowly disappears after Romeo in banished.
At the end of the scene Benvolio is left to narrate. He has to give an account to the Prince of the deaths of Tybalt and Mercutio. The account that Benvolio gives is fair and accurate, he is not at all biased. “There lies the man, slain by young Romeo, That slew thy kinsman, brave Mercutio.” Benvolio is honest about the deaths and doesn’t lie about Romeo killing Tybalt, which is what we expected Benvolio to do because of him being sensible.
The plot develops in the scene when Mercutio repeats “A plague on both your houses!” By saying this he means a plague on both families, the Montagues and the Capulets, becayse after all it was because of their feuds that he was killed, which in a way is unfair on Mercutio because he didn’t belong to either one of the families. The repetition of this curse makes you think that worse things are yet to happen which is true, because it is then revealed that Romeo is banished from Verona, which causes suspense, leaving the audience to worry about what will happen to Juliet.
Conclusion
Act 3 scene 1 is such an important and dramatic scene. The Audience could sense the deaths coming; they could see the tension building up. The audience feel a great amount of sympathy for Romeo, because they understand why he didn’t want to fight Tybalt, but after him killing his best friend Mercutio, he had no choice.
The audience now know that there is no way that Romeo and Juliet can be together. The audience are effected because they arse denied of a happy ending.
Act 3 scene 1 is the turning point in the play because the families are reconciled at the end, there is relief at last. The families have stopped the feuding after the deaths which shows that some good can come out of bad.
The Prince finishes the scene with a bit of ‘Princly Wisdom’ ; “Mercy but murders pardoning those that kill.” In other words, if those who kill are given mercy, that’s as much as giving permission for murder. So he punishes, not for revenge, but to keep the peace. The audience agree with the Prince’s decision and respect him for that.
I think that this scene is the most tragic and important of the whole play, with there being two deaths and a banishment, meaning that Romeo and Juliet can never be. This is the beginning of the end for Romeo; he has lost his best friend and in return took his wife’s cousins life.
Sadly the only place Romeo and Juliet can now be together is in heaven.
