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Hyperbole In Romeo And Juliet

Decent Essays

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, is the tale of two lovers whose forbidden love for each other tear them apart. The play starts off like a fairytale when Romeo and Juliet meet and immediately fall in love. However, as the play progresses their love for each other ruins them and their loved ones. Their forbidden loves causes some of their closest friends to be killed and by the end, they are killed. Many people consider this play a tragedy and that Shakespeare's purpose was to share how love can ruin people. However, there is a huge amount of evidence that supports Romeo and Juliet being a comedy instead. For instance, the amount of hyperbole used, the amount of ridiculous scenarios, and the characters actions (especially …show more content…

The amount of ridiculous scenarios in this play make it hard to believe that this is supposed to be sad. By the time we have seen eight scenes with terrible timings and preventable mistakes, the audience starts to lose sympathy. When Romeo and Juliet first meet and find out they are children of enemies, Juliet says that if Romeo is really a Montague and he loves her she will “no longer be a Capulet.” This is obviously ridiculous because Juliet is only thirteen and can’t make decisions like this for herself. Plus, after they get married she does not run away with him and instead goes home and pretends nothing happened. If they had run away, Juliet would have not had to fake her death. Since she faked her death, they had to mail a letter to Romeo, because he was banished, saying that she has faked her death. Knowing that there is always a possibility that the mail might not get to Romeo, Friar could have sent someone to tell Romeo what was going on. This is ridiculous because they all knew where he was and instead Juliet took a magic potion that would make her have “no pulse.”She could have just run away. Then when Romeo kills himself, Juliet wakes up right after and says that she “will not away,” and then tries to kiss Romeo to poison herself because “(he) did not leave her any poison to help her die.” No one would have tried to do this and instead would have stabbed herself first. These ridiculous …show more content…

These actions and lines said and done by the characters are usually hilarious and make the audience want to laugh forever. One of the characters, Paris, is the most hilarious characters because he is so oblivious to what is going on. For example, Paris says, “Younger than she are happy mothers made,” when we first see him. By saying this we see how oblivious Paris is because he has just asked Juliet’s father to marry her and he said that she was too young and she had never met him. Juliet obviously would not be happy to marry Paris and have his child. Later on in the play, Juliet’s father allows him to marry her and when he is talking to the Friar he say that “(she) must love (him) on Thursday when they get married.”This is ridiculous because she has just told him that she does not really love him or wants to marry him. Lastly, when Romeo kills Paris, he literally says, “O, I am slain! If thou be merciful, open the tomb, lay me with Juliet.” Again we see that Paris is oblivious to the fact that Juliet never loved him and loved Romeo. Despite the title being The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, there is evidence of this play being a comedy instead. The hyperbole used, the ridiculous scenarios, and the way Paris among other characters act all make this play a little bit more comedic. I think that Shakespeare purposefully made this a comedy; however I think he might have failed at making it a comedy within a

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