How important is the theme of conflict in Romeo and Juliet?

How important is the theme of conflict in the play Romeo and Juliet?

Conflict is the struggle found in fiction. There are mainly two kinds internal and external, internal being a struggle that takes place in a characters mind. For example, a character may have to decide between right and wrong or between two solutions to a problem. External conflict is a struggle between another character, or maybe a struggle with nature. For example, the story may be the main character struggling against the artic cold. Conflict is used in all good dramas such as: Soaps, movies, books etc.

Conflict is necessary in every story. In short stories there is usually one major conflict. In longer stories, there could be several conflicts. Conflict adds excitement and suspense to a story. The conflict usually becomes clear to the beginning of a story. As the plot unfolds, the reader starts to wonder what will happen next and how the characters will handle the situation. Many readers enjoy trying to predict the final outcome. The excitement usually builds to a high point, or climax. The climax is the turning point of the story. Something has happened to resolve the conflict. Dramatists and script writers include conflicts in their dramas because they like to grip the audience, have them on the edge of there seats. They want them to watch more and continue having an interest in the play or drama.

I think conflict is important in Romeo and Juliet because that is the theme of the play. The whole play is a love struck tragedy. The scene we see first which contains conflict is the opening scene: Act I scene 1, where the two households fight. Putting conflict in the very first scene made us want to read on more deeply into the story to find out what happens. Which is what the script writer intended it to do.

The conflict that appears in this play the most is external, such as sword fighting and abuse, but there is also a lot of internal, having to choose the wrong or right option in your mind. Like when Juliet needed to choose whether to go against her parents wishes and marry Romeo in a secret marriage or to wait and marry Paris as they had wanted her to do.

We are planning to discuss conflict in the prologue, act I scene 1 and act III scene 5 in more detail in further lessons.

A prologue is an introduction to a play. It gives you an idea on what the play will be about. The prologue occurs at the beginning of a play, the start of a book etc. Romeo and Juliet opens with a prologue in sonnet form that highlights two key points: how Romeo is affected by meeting Juliet and the difficulties the lovers will face as members of two opposed families, The sonnet introduces the idea of conflict using words and phrases such as; ‘’Ancient Grudge’’, ‘’New Mutiny’’ ‘’Parents Strife’’. The opening lines of the Sonnet stress the speed with which Romeo and Juliet have fallen in love, while poking fun at the way Romeo has abandoned his pursuit of Rosaline. Nonetheless, this introductory material serves to distinguish between Romeo’s cold, miserable, unrequited love for Rosaline and his true, intensely mutual love with Juliet. In the line "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life," Shakespeare informs his audience that the death of these young lovers was preordained, the deliberate act of malevolent fortune. But Shakespeare complicates the message by adding "Whose misadventured piteous overthrows/Do with their death bury their parents' strife." suggesting that the fate of Romeo and Juliet is due also to certain misadventurous acts of these two piteous characters. Despite the fact that they will die, the lovers try to control their own fate. They don’t listen to their parents and take absolute control of their life. Although they flee from their home that can lead them closer to happiness, fate intercepts it by their suicide. Ironically, the more they try to control their fate, the quicker they reach their destiny.

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The Shakespearian prologues are commonly written in a sonnet with fourteen lines and with a regular rhyme scheme, it was a popular 16th century way of expressing love and conflict in a play. Two families, Capulet’s and Montague’s, are hostile to each other but their children, Romeo and Juliet, fall in love with each other. They try to escape from the conflict by death. That’s how death helps to mend the ancient quarrels between both families. Just before the end of the ancient quarrel, the feud between the families kills the lovers passively. In Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare writes in sonnet form in order to point to the play’s themes of love and the feud because sonnets were often used to address the subject of love in conflict. The sonnet also draws on the audience’s expectations of the kinds of imagery that will be used. The prologue tells us in brief what will happen in the story; it gives us an outline, so we can decide whether to read on or not.

The plays structure is very important in Romeo and Juliet. The scene comes straight after the prologue. I think this is because once the audience have a good idea of what the play is going to be about they are keen to find out more. By the conflict in the first scene, Shakespeare has got the audience on the edge if their seats and they want to see more. You want do stay gripped so you can find out what is going to happen later on in the play. Conflict interests the audience because it adds excitement to the play and makes it more interesting.

In this first scene Sampson and Gregory enter armed with swords and bucklers, his gives an indication to the audience that a fight is about to take place. Act One, Scene One; a fight erupts in the public square. Swords are drawn in order to bring the audience into the plot. Benvolio, Montague's nephew, and Tybalt, Capulet's nephew, enter from different directions. Gregory tells Sampson, “Draw thy tool. Here comes of the house of Montague’s”. The feud thus rekindled, Capulet joins in the swordplay in the same scene, saying “Give me my long sword, ho!” The conflict in the first scene is mostly physical, i.e. sword fights and guns. They join in the . The two families throw insults at each other, including the famous "Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?" remark before they have chance to say much, When Benvolio tries to stop the servants fighting, but when Tybalt enters he forces Benvolio into a fight himself; so begins the ‘new mutiny’ of the prologue. Tybalt tells Benvolio to turn around because he is about to kill him, but Benvolio doesn’t want to fight and tries to keep the peace; “ I do but keep the peace” but Tybalt says he doesn’t believe in it and hates it as much as hell. “What, drawn, and talk of peace! I hate the word, As I hate hell, all Montagues, and thee” Tybalt has always got a reason to fight with the Montagues because of this ‘ancient grudge’ against the two families, and he loves to fight so it suits him just perfectly. Eventually The Prince of Verona arrives and stops the fight. He gives the two households a warning that the next person to start a fight on the street will pay with their life. “If ever you disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace.”

The Montague’s, especially, Tybalt have a desire to keep this grudge ongoing for years to come. They always start the fights and usually end up finishing them too.

When I watched Baz Luhrman’s interpretation of the film, I predicted there would be another fight. The audience stay gripped on the book/film/play because they want to know if another fight will break out and if someone will end up paying with their life.

In this, the second part of Act One Scene One is a complete contrast to the first part. Romeo is suffering, He’s in love with a girl names Rosaline, but she doesn’t feel the same as Romeo does. This is making Romeo depressed and he can’t stop thinking about her. Benvolio tells Romeos parents that he will find out what is wrong with him; there is a change in tone at his point. “See where he comes. So please you step aside; I’ll know his grievance or much is denied”. His father also talks about Romeo being sad and wanting to be alone and not to talk to anybody. But he then sees Juliet at the Capulet’s party forgets about Rosaline and falls in love with Juliet. Love at first sight. ’’Now Romeo is beloved, and loves again’’ This shows how fickle Romeo is.

Shakespeare intended to make the audience feel like they were included in the play. He wanted them to keep watching the play and keep interest, and it worked when our class watched the play, everyone wanted to carry on watching after all the sword fighting and the Prince’s threats towards them. They wanted to see what happened. I think it was definitely a good opening scene.

In Act Three, Scene Five there is both internal and external conflict, but the conflict is mostly internal. Shortly after Romeo leaves Juliet's room, Lady Capulet enters. She thinks Juliet because she is mourning for Tybalt’s death, but in fact in this scene Juliet, uses a double meaning. When Romeo leaves and Juliet is crying. Her mother thinks that she mourning the death of her cousin Tybalt and Juliet confirms it, but she is actually crying about Romeo knowing that he killed Tybalt and has now been banished for it. Lady Capulet can see that Juliet is upset, and tells her she has something that will defiantly cheer her up. She tells Juliet that her father has organized a nice surprise for her, this Thursday she is expected to marry a wealthy, friend of the Prince named Paris. Juliet then goes on to say that shed rather marry Romeo – The families rival than Paris, she also asks ‘Why are you making me marry so fast?’ Her father then arrives and her mum tells Juliet to tell him yourself, and see how he takes it. Juliet tells him that she doesn’t want to marry Paris, but doesn’t want to upset her father, and she’s grateful that he has tried but she can’t marry Paris. Her father gets very, very mad and exclaims that even if he has to drag her to the church on Thursday then he will. He says ‘’I’ve gone to all this trouble and effort and you’ve thrown it back in my face, I found you a really good husband, and your just whining, You don’t have to get married, you can GET OUT! Juliet gets down on her knees and begs her father not to make her marry Paris. He ignores her and says ’tallow-face’’ towards Juliet, which means ‘’Pale faced’,’ if Juliet won’t marry Paris her father says that he will disown her, and throw her out and then he leaves. Juliet begs her mum to delay the wedding for a month, even a week, but she refuses telling Juliet she’s siding with Capulet and never talk to her again, but Juliet threatens to kill herself and end up like Tybalt but Lady Capulet just says go ahead I cannot be bothered anymore. In Shakespearian days, daughters were supposed to just take what their fathers said and do it, so you can imagine her father’s rage when Juliet refused. An audience in Shakespearian times would be on Lord Capulet’s side because daughters were expected to do what their fathers told them to, a modern audience would be on Juliet’s side as arranged marriages are now not so common.

Lord Capulet’s anger was very important in this scene; In Baz Luhrmans interpretation of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ her Fathers tone is very annoyed and angry. You can feel the tension building up between them and you can see Capulet getting angrier until he finally cracks and just insults and hits everyone. The build up was quite gradual, it gave you time to think what was about to happen, whether, Capulet would crack or whether he’d resist and just walk away. I think Shakespeare did right by making the build up gradual, it keeps the audience on the edge of there seats for just a little bit longer, and when Capulet anger does explode the audience are happy they stayed to watch!

Juliet finds it hard to try to get her point across in the argument. Capulet is like a proud lion, the head of the pack and he doesn’t like anyone to tell him what to do and how and when Juliet tries to defend herself against him, he gets very mad. He’s so used to bossing everyone around and being the head of the household and everyone listening to him so when Juliet sticks up for herself he finds it quite surprising. Capulet doesn’t think Juliet’s views are important, in the argument he doesn’t let her get a word in edgeways. He thinks he’s always right, even about her marriage. Juliet hates the idea of an arranged marriage.

In Shakespearian times I think the audience would have been gripped to this play. There are just so many problems occurring one after the other and so much violence that they would have loved it! Now a days I don’t think people would have acted so enthusiastically towards this play as people did then. People no would just be say ‘Oh no, he’s dead, I wonder what will happen next?’ I don’t think that they’d be as excited about what would happen next, and I also think we’d be less gripped on the play if we saw it at the theatre.

Baz Luhrman made an excellent job of the film – I thought. He made it so intense and gripping that you just couldn’t help but want to keep on watching. The film was very exciting and showed how the story would be in modern days. It was a very good replica of the Shakespearian play and made us all understand the play just a little bit better. Can we watch it again Miss!?…

I would maybe add just a little more violence to this scene to bring out the theme of conflict. I would of like to of seen a little more action in this scene maybe having Capulet hit Juliet with a household item…maybe the morning paper or maybe he could just smash a cup of coffee on the floor, Other than that I think this scene was made very well, the built up in anger was gradual which kept the readers gripped to the story, the tone of Capulet’s voice was obvious, and you could tell how mad he was getting about the whole subject. The language used in this scene was very violent, lot of shouting and verbal abuse aimed towards each other, which was very interesting.

I think the theme of conflict is so very important in this play because it is the backbone of the whole story. The whole play is based on tragedy, which you can tell will contain conflict. If there were no fighting in the play, there would basically be no play. In every Act and Scene, there is drama and conflict. This is what keeps the audience entertained and gripped to the story. If there were to be no verbal conflict or violence in his play, nobody would come to watch it because it would be so boring. There’d be nothing to be intrigued in, nothing exciting, and the actors would be covered in rotten fruit and vegetables by the time the show finishes.

I think Love and Hatred are both equally important in this play.Without Romeo and Juliet falling in love, Romeo would still be upset about Rosaline and neither Romeo nor Juliet would have died at the end. The families would probably still have that ‘’ancient grudge’’ ongoing.

I think the conflict in this play would still appeal to a modern audience, yes. I mean Romeo and Juliet fall in love, but are from rival families, Juliet pretends to kill herself, Romeo hears about it, and he kills himself just as Juliet awakes. So she sees Romeo dead and so she kills herself. It’s just so dramatic, and entertaining, I would defiantly recommend this play to anyone.