Tybalt, a Capulet, and Benvolio, a Montague, enter and join the fight; they see their comrades squaring up and naturally, as the feud is driven by the family names, they join in. Slightly later on so do Capulet and Montague themselves. It is quite significant that the leaders of the two houses are the last to get involved as it illustrates the extent of the dispute from the leaders of the houses, to sons and nephews and finally even to servants and friends of the family. If anybody had a warranted reason for a fight, it would arguably be the heads of the household, unless the argument was isolated to a particular member of the family. Gregory, the Capulet’s servant, states ‘The quarrel is between our masters, and us their men.’ It is as if they have been conscripted to join the brawl.
Act one scene one is also significant to the rest of the plot as a consequence from what the Prince says after he puts a stop to the fight. He delivers a speech in which he informs us of the history of street fighting the two families have tallied up and how if they disturb the peace once more they will pay the price with their lives. The ultimatum set by the Prince lays a lot of tension for the rest of the play;, the audience knows what will happen if they fight again, but at the same time you know that they will as they obviously can’t restrain themselves.
The prince’s speech uses many metaphors to emphasise how he’s had enough but also it grabs your attention. Metaphors such as ‘With purple fountains issuing from your veins’ grabs your attention but adds colour to the text. The rawness of the sentences and distaste in the prince’s voice make his speech almost a scene of violence in itself.
Besides having an informative purpose, the violence and sword-fighting of the first scene of the play delves the audience directly into the conflicted world of the two families in an action-packed way and grabs their attention immediately, avoiding boredom.
The next scene of significant conflict isn’t until Act 3 Scene 1, a point in the play when Romeo’s world starts to disintegrate around him. In this scene Romeo has just wed Juliet and, an elated man, he goes to see Mercutio and friends. However, Tybalt and his fellow Capulets demand satisfaction for Romeo gate crashing the Capulet ball, when in fact he went as Mercutio’s guest. The audience knows the consequences the characters will face if they are caught fighting again and at the same time know that they’ll end up fighting and something dreadful will happen.
Benvolio knows what the consequences will be and, at the very start of the scene, tries hard to encourage Mercutio to retire, so as to avoid the Capulets. He knows Mercutio wouldn’t back down from a fight if challenged and fears what will happen if he lets his pride get the better of him. Tybalt acts surprisingly civil towards Mercutio and Benvolio, asking for a quick word. Mercutio immediately tries to start a fight when, again, there is nothing to fight about- Tybalt did, however, antagonise Mercutio with the title “Minstrel”.
After Romeo refuses to fight Tybalt, as he is now indirect family, Mercutio stands to defend the Montague’s honour, but he was obviously spoiling for a fight from the start of the scene. Tybalt kills Mercutio, followed by Romeo killing Tybalt in anger. The significance the violence and deaths hold is in the irony of the entire situation- everything that could have gone wrong went wrong. There are many aspects to the irony. Firstly, Romeo, trying to evade conflict by refusing to fight Tybalt, caused Mercutio to get involved and risked both their lives. Romeo, trying to intervene, causes more damage than he stopped as it was him obstructing Mercutio’s view that resulted in Tybalt stabbing him. The most ironic aspect of it all is that the marriage of Romeo and Juliet was planned to bring the families in unity, but all it did was separate them further- there are deaths on both families’ parts and now their renewed hatred is vindicated.
The emotive dying breath of Mercutio, ‘A plague a’both your houses’, sums up the reaction by many at this time. The seriousness of the feud starts to dawn as deaths are starting to occur. The family feud is taken to a different level; the childish play seen from the start has deteriorated to murder and bereavement by both families. It’s no longer a game and Mercutio can see that.
The obvious impact on the play from this scene is that two fairly major characters are now dead. The major consequence is that Romeo is now a murderer, and faces death. As he was avenging the death of Mercutio, the Prince is lenient and restricts his punishment to banishment. Either way, his relationship with Juliet was over.
The violence of the scene also helps to develop the character of Romeo. You see how the passion within him drives him to kill Tybalt, showing the audience a different side than we have come to know. At the end of the scene he says ‘I am fortune’s fool’. This is an important statement as it shows his regret as soon as the deed has been done; it sums up his feelings at the time- he knows he will be punished and be separated from Juliet, as well as the fact he has murdered her cousin.
Act 3 scene 5 utilises a different type of conflict in comparison to the sword fighting and swashbuckling of the other scenes. In this scene, Juliet’s father abuses, insults and demeans Juliet after she refuses to marry Paris. The conflict, in some ways, is more powerful than the obvious, bloody kind. Juliet’s father, the man she should be able to trust and feel secure with barrages her with degrading insults and emotional turmoil. It also shows how Juliet’s life crumbles around her almost in unison with Romeo’s, how their love grows more and more hopeless.
The scene displays how horrible Juliet’s home life is right now and the build-up to her elaborate faking of her own death. The scene’s conflict is essential in order to show the audience how lost and confused she must feel. The insults her father throws at her must make her feel like life wouldn’t be worth living if she didn’t marry Paris, but she can’t marry Paris because she is still Romeo’s wife. Capulet shouts ‘Out, you green-sickness carrion! Out, you baggage! You tallow-face!’, ‘And that we have a curse in having here.’ To hear your own father threaten to disown you and say such horrific things without love or compassion are a key factor to the next action she performs, drinking the sleeping draught and staging her own death.
The final scene of conflict is act 5 scene 3, the penultimate climax to the play’s preceding events. This scene is where you can really see how the character of Romeo has progressed throughout the play. He is no longer the gallant young Montague but a shadow of a man with nothing to live for. The play expresses this well in how he kills Paris with very little hesitation. The action shows how he has nothing to live for and feels nothing now Juliet is dead, but at the same time tells us that he will do anything to see Juliet’s body for the last time, how she meant everything to him and that he would kill another human being just to say goodbye. The point is reinforced further by the fact that he didn’t even know who he was killing- it didn’t matter to him until he realised.
Finally, the two lovers’ suicide brings about the play’s climax. The poignant moment truly represents how, once they had met, their lives were meaningless without the other, that it was better to die than to live on without the other. There is much dramatic irony, as well; the audience is powerless to stop them as they see the two naïve young adults express their love in the severest of fashions. It shows violence in another light as well, not only to cause pain against others but to ease their own pain.
The violence, as a whole, maintains the pace of the play. It plays part to many of the significant changes in to the direction of the plot, and brings about most of the consequences and twists. On a more obvious level, without the feud between the two families, Romeo and Juliet would not have to have concealed their relationship and things would have been much simpler for them- the violence is crucial to the plot and the fight scenes reinforce the idea into the audience’s head that this can never work.
On a simpler level, it also draws the audience in and attracts their attention directly through the exciting appeal violence brings to a story. The action and explosiveness of the violence helps to retain the audience’s interest.
The violence is also a way of echoing the characters thoughts and feelings, visually aiding in the progression of the story. It graphically shows the conflict and therefore it becomes a lot easier to understand.
