Romeo And Juliet Gender Roles

William Shakespeare is the world’s pre-eminent dramatist whose plays range from tragedies to tragic comedies, etc. His general style of writing is often comparable to several of his contemporaries, like Romeo and Juliet is based on Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem, “The tragical history of Romeo and Juliet”. But Shakespeare’s works express a different range of human experience where his characters command the sympathy of audiences and also are complex as well as human in nature. Shakespeare makes the protagonist’s character development central to the plot.

Throughout Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, there is an overlaying presence of the typical roles that men and women were supposed to play. During Elizabethan times there was a major difference between the way men and women were supposed to act. Men typically were supposed to be masculine and powerful, and defend the honor. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to be subservient to their men in their lives and do as ever they wished. In Romeo and Juliet the typical gender roles that men and women were supposed to play had an influence on the fate of their lives.

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, we see that it defies most traditional gender roles in the play by allowing his characters to surpass the

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets have very different relationships with their children. A major reason for this, as well as much of the conflict in the tale, comes from the gender roles that Romeo and Juliet are expected to play into. Adding to that conflict is the fact that both Romeo and Juliet push the boundaries of these roles and struggle to fit into them. Romeo plays the over emotional lover, while Juliet is clever and dominant. Throughout the play we can see that both Romeo and Juliet have to struggle with the people around them because they are not acting within their respective gender roles.

Challenging the Roles of Gender in Shakespeare In Shakespeare’s play, Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare challenges the use of gender roles, which are social and behavioral standards assigned to the sexes, which were established during his time period. Shakespeare challenges these roles through his characters, Romeo and Juliet, by having them rebel against the social construction of gender set in Verona. Gender roles during the Elizabethan age were formed under patriarchal social construct.

When reading literature from the Renaissance period, it is clear to see male and female characters were thought upon as two completely different types of people. By following what the bible told them about the opposite sexes, writers in this time were able to set specific gender norms for both men and women. However, when reading the works of William Shakespeare, one can sense a riff in the norms of either sex. With characters such as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, we can see a character that possess qualities that do not necessarily belong to their gender. However, with a character like Desdemona in Othello, we can see

One of William Shakespeare's celebrated tragedies, Romeo and Juliet, brims with a kaleidoscope of social conflicts and social issues that drag the major characters into an inevitable abyss of adversity. Set in a patriarchal society that is encumbered by civil discord, a resentful and ancient feud between two noble families, Romeo and Juliet provides us with an intricate yet interesting vignette of English life in the late 16th century. It allows us to navigate a labyrinth of Elizabethan social endeavors, particularly about love, marriage, obedience, hierarchy, honor, and order. The play starts with a prologue that foreshadows the tragic demise of a pair of star-crossed lovers, whose genuine love for each other does not spare them from a disheartening fate.

In the epilogue, the audience is reminded that the character Rosalind is played by a boy actor when she says the lines; “If I were a woman, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not” (Epi. 17-20). Based on the gender norms during this era, this line would cause discomfort among the audience because the boy actor is saying that he would kiss the men in the audience if he was truly a woman. During Shakespeare’s time it was okay for a man to have feelings for another man for a short period of time as long as he never acted on it because this shows that the man has not yet matured. He will only truly mature into an adult when he has taken a wife for himself and forget about

In the play, Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare both Romeo and Juliet fit into gender expectations in some ways. Gender roles are stereotypes that males and females fulfill and each of the same gender is supposed to follow by a courtesy code. Most gender roles are not being followed anymore as shown by the fact that women like sports as much as men; men can now stay at home and have the females in the family work. Although Juliet conforms to gender expectations by making irrational decisions, being childish and depending on others, but in some circumstances, she also defies them by not listening to her father. To start with, Juliet is easily swayed into rash decisions without thinking them through.

During the time period of Shakespeare, gender roles were a huge part in every woman and man’s life and tell each individual how he or she should behave and exist. In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597), the portrayal of a working class woman is seen through the Nurse, in Verona. The Nurse is an older woman whom works as a trusted servant in the Capulet household, which includes Juliet. The gender roles were strict within the household during Shakespeare’s time and the females were taught to be disciplined and obey by being a lady in a patriarchal family system. The Nurse serves and shows this discipline by playing an important role as a messenger to Romeo to gather all the details to their secret marriage to make Juliet pleased.

The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, written by William Shakespeare, is about young lovers, whose tragic deaths reconcile their two families’ feud. Romeo first appears as very light and poetic, but his demeanor then shifts to a darker and depressing outlook. Around the beginning of the play, we see Juliet as a young woman who has never thought of marriage. Near the end, Juliet’s opinion on marriage shifts completely. Romeo’s first display of being light and poetic occurs while he is talking with his cousin, Benvolio.

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is based on a story of a quarrel between the Montagues and Capulets who disrupted the city of Verona causing the fate of the ‘two star crossed lovers’ to bring a gloomy peace. Romeo’s monologue in Act II scene II - one of the most famous scenes in all of Shakespeare’s play - illustrates one of the most significant themes of the play, love. Shakespeare conveys the theme of love through the use of a variety of literary techniques such as rhetorical questions, metaphors and imagery to display the theme of love within the play.

“The course of true love never did run smooth,” comments Lysander of love’s complications in an exchange with Hermia (Shakespeare I.i.136). Although the play A Midsummer Night’s Dream certainly deals with the difficulty of romance, it is not considered a true love story like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare, as he unfolds the story, intentionally distances the audience from the emotions of the characters so he can caricature the anguish and burdens endured by the lovers. Through his masterful use of figurative language, Shakespeare examines the theme of the capricious and irrational nature of love.

William Shakespeare once told us, "All the World’s a Stage" —and now his quote can be applied to his own life as it is portrayed in the recent film, Shakespeare In Love. This 1998 motion picture prospered with the creative scripting of Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman and direction of John Madden. The combined effort of these men, on top of many other elements, produced a film that can equally be enjoyed by the Shakespeare lover for its literary brilliance, or for the romantic viewer who wants to experience a passionate love story.

Shakespeare in Love is a metamorphic representation of Shakespeare’s life and of his play entitled Romeo and Juliet, because there are many changes and distortions of the historical facts. But it doesn’t make the film less; on the contrary it gives a new perspective on Shakespeare’s “lost