Romeo and Juliet Essay - a play with a tragic theme

This essay gives a general answer to a 'theme' question from a higher English past paper.

Question -

Choose a play which involves a tragic theme and show how the dramatist makes the play a moving experience for the audience. You may refer to structure, characterisation, key scene(s) or any other appropriate feature.

Structure -

1. Introduction
2. The character of Romeo / the start of the play
3. Key scene - act 3, scene 1
4. Juliet’s monologue
5. Conclusion

‘Romeo and Juliet’ is one of Shakespeare’s best known stories and most celebrated tragedies. In this essay I will show how the structure and characterisation of the play make it a moving experience for an audience. The tragedy comes from the play’s twin themes of love and violence. The prologue suggests the ‘star-crossed lovers’ will meet a tragic end and in the first scene there is a brawl between the Capulet and Montague families; the Prince forbids any fighting in public and shortly after this, we are introduced to Romeo, who stands in contrast to the violent society of Verona.

Romeo represents the wide-eyed romantic who falls in love at first sight. who is pining for his love Rosalind. He has missed the violence in the street. Mercutio and Benvolio persuade him to attend the party at the Capulet’s house where he meets Juliet. The dialogue of the play emphasizes his rush of emotion at their first meeting: ‘She doth teach the torches to burn bright’. Comparing beauty to fire suggests that it can be a destructive force. In contrast, Mercutio is a more down-to-earth character; he makes rude jokes and puns at Romeo’s expense and mocks his friend for being naïve and idealistic.

The turning point of the play is act 3, scene 1. Before this, things have been going well for the lovers. In the previous scene, they were married, after the Nurse and Friar Benedict have given them advice and support. At the start of this scene, Mercutio mocks Benvolio for being a troublemaker. When Tybalt arrives, Mercutio turns his jesting to him. The tone of this dialogue is light rather than serious. When Romeo arrives, his attitude towards Tybalt is that of reconciliation.

The death of Mercutio is accidental. He is wounded under Romeo’s arm as he tries to break up the fight. It can be played by the actors as horseplay that goes wrong. Mercutio continues to joke as he dies, about his wound: ‘it is not as wide as a cellar door but it may suffice’. Comedy co-exists with tragedy through the course of the play; however, with the death of Mercutio, the tone of the play changes as the lovers launch their desperate plan.

The outcome of this scene is that the play ends in tragedy. The lovers make plans to elope but bad luck and rash decisions mean that they both end up committing suicide. Romeo is rash and idealistic, without the climate of violence created by the Capulets and Montagues, the plan to escape with Juliet may well have worked. It is therefore difficult to argue that the lovers were fated to die, even though this is the tone of the play’s prologue.

The events at the cemetery are foreshadowed by Juliet’s final monologue:

I'll call them back again to comfort me.
Nurse!- What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.

The Nurse is a stabilising influence upon the young lovers, but at this point in the play Juliet has rejected any further help, as she criticised her romance with Romeo. The audience is prepared for the final scene in the graveyard - she fears waking up with Tybalt’s corpse in her family tomb. This symbolizes that her own family may represent death to her – the world of brawling and one-upmanship is perhaps the factor that caused her to fall in love with Romeo in the first place. Even though it puts her in danger, Juliet would rather make her own decisions than do what is expected; and this leads to the final tragedy of the double suicide.

In these ways, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ is a tragic play which makes the audience think about issues of love and violence. The fact that it may have ended happily makes it a moving experience.