We next see Capulet at the masquerade ball, which he is hosting. He is welcoming his guests and talking like a gentleman, but is also making jokes, ‘welcome gentleman, ladies that have their toes / Unplagu’d with corns’. He is trying to behave like a good host to give his family a good reputation. Capulet is not wanting any trouble at his celebration therefore he welcomes Romeo, who is a Montague, into his ball, ‘I would not for the wealth of all this town / Here in my house do him disparagement.’ Tybalt is making a fuss over Romeo coming to the ball, ‘Now by the stock and honour of my kin,/To strike him dead I hold it not a sin.’ Capulet is a proud man and behaves calmly considering the situation, which gives us a good impression of him.
Act 3 scene 5 begins with Juliet and Romeo in Juliet’s bedroom. This is a gentle and calm environment. Capulet plays an important part in this scene because he discovers Juliet does not want to marry Paris. When he enters the scene Capulet’s language is poetic and calm ‘For still thy eyes, which I may call the sea,/Do ebb and flow with tears.’ When Capulet finds out that Juliet does not want to marry Paris his language changes and he becomes more annoyed.
‘How? Will she none? Doth she not give us thanks?
Is she not proud? Doth she not count her blest,
Unworthy as she is, that we have wrought
So worthy a gentleman to be her bride?’
He thinks she is being disobedient towards him because he has found such a worthy gentleman. His language becomes more aggressive and he is angry. Capulet is telling Juliet that she has to marry Paris and is being quite offensive to her. He does not care if Juliet is upset and he thinks the marriage is best for her because it will look good for him. He threatens that if she does not turn up he will disown her ‘And you be not, hang! Beg! Starve! Die in the streets!/For by my soul I’ll ne’er acknowledge thee.’ He is sure what he wants and in Shakespeare’s day it was common for a father to arrange a marriage. His unnecessary violent language gives us a bad impression of him and makes him sound cruel.
When Capulet finds out Juliet has died he is distraught, at first he does not believe it ‘Ha! Let me see her .Out alas. She’s cold’. As he realises that his daughter is dead he becomes more anxious ‘Alack my child is dead,/And with my child my joys are buried.’ After Friar Lawrence speaks to Capulet, he decides to give his daughter a proper burial ‘All things that we ordained festival/ Turn from their office to black funeral’. Capulet is still wanting the best for his daughter, and has not turned his back on her, he wants what any father would want for their daughter’s funeral. At this point an audience may feel sorry for Capulet as he has just lost his daughter. Capulet’s last words in the play are ‘ Poor sacrifices of our enmity’, he is realising the consequences of their feud. It seems a shame for Capulet that it takes such a terrible thing like his daughter dying to make him realise how important family is and, how selfish he has been.
Capulet is an interesting character to the audience for many reasons. Capulet is interesting because of the way he develops, he is complicated and hard to understand but goes from being selfish to being compassionate. Audiences may react to Capulet differently at different times. The people in the time of Capulet may go along with his way of thinking and they may be horrified at Juliet’s refusal to marry Paris. At the time Shakespeare was writing, the father was the head of the household. A modern audience may find Capulet’s attitude old-fashioned and they may be surprised at the lack of respect he has for his daughter. We may see where he is coming from, but it is just the way he is acting which is hard to agree with. Capulet has good qualities and bad qualities and it is this, which makes him an interesting character.
