how Juliet's character has developed during the course of the play

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Kris Statham        

Through close analysis of Shakespeare’s language, show how Juliet’s character has developed during the course of the play.

        

Romeo and Juliet is a romantic tragedy that follows the story of two young people of feuding families falling in love. At the beginning of the play Juliet is young and dependent on other people, but when she meets Romeo who is older she matures quickly throughout the course of the play. Although nowadays it is normal for people to love someone of the same age, it was accepted in the days of the play that the boy would be older, and hence more mature, than the girl and it was normal and accepted for a girl to get married at a young age. Some of Juliet’s characteristics are portrayed clearly to the audience however others can be deduced from close analysis of the language used and throughout the play Juliet is pushed into situations that require her to change her maturity.

In Act 2 Scene 5, Juliet is waiting restlessly for her nurse to return with news from Romeo: Whether or not he will wed her. In this Scene a soliloquy is performed by Juliet, this means that she is speaking aloud to no other characters but only the audience. This is crucial as it is a good way for the audience to see characters true feelings and learn more about them.

Throughout the scene, Juliet uses many words to portray speed, adjectives such as “long” and “wind-swift”, she also uses verbs like “send” and “glides” and nouns like “journey” and “ball”. She uses these words as she is eager and impatient; she does not want to wait to find out what news her nurse carries from Romeo.

Although these words may be to do with speed, they are all used to show how Juliet is impatient and somewhat annoyed with the nurse. She curses the nurse by describing her as “slow”, “unwieldy” and “heavy”.  She is impatient with the nurse because it has been “three long hours, yet she has not come”. We can also see she is impatient from lines 4 to 8: “…She is lame! Loves heralds should be thoughts…Therefore do nimble-pinioned doves draw love and therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings”. She wants her messages of love to and from Romeo to travel instantaneously. She does not want to wait to find out what is happening, showing the audience she is impatient.

On line 13 Juliet speaks a simile, “Had she affections and warm youthful blood, she would be swift in motion as a ball”, this means that she wants the nurse to remember what it’s like to be young, to be in love, so she would carry the messages as fast as a balls. This shows the audience again how impatient Juliet is.

The first line of the scene spoken by Juliet, also suggests to the audience how time is playing on her mind. This is cleverly done through the use of short, sharp, monosyllabic words, “The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse”, that the audience get the impression of the clocks ticking in her head. The audience sees that she is aware of every passing second and is desperately awaiting news from Romeo.

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From this scene the audience see how impatient and childish Juliet is. However we also get to see her concern and unease where she says “perchance she cannot meet him”, meaning what would happen if the nurse cannot find Romeo, which also shows the audience that she is worried, and desperately in love with Romeo, wanting to hear his every word and to marry him.

In Act 3 scene 2, we get to see not much has changed about Juliet’s personality and Shakespeare makes use of dramatic irony; this is used as the audience know that Romeo has just ...

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