Violence In Romeo And Juliet Essay

‘I do but keep the peace. Put up thy sword, or manage it to part

In great literature, no scene of violence exists for its own sake. Explain how a violent scene or scenes contribute to the meaning of the play.

William Shakespeare’s play, “Romeo and Juliet,” takes place in Verona- a city in Italy which is governed by a prince. There is also a Friar named Laurence, who is a religious figure that citizens go to for advice and to be married. In the City lives the Capulets and the Montagues who have been disputing for generations. Both families have children and one child from each family are the protagonists- Romeo is a member of the Montagues and Juliet is a member of the Capulets. Romeo and Juliet will end up falling for each other. However, they end up dying young because Friar Laurence married them in private, he gave Juliet a potion which knocked her out which lead to her and Romeo’s suicides, and he trusted Friar John to deliver the letter and

(Act 1 Scene 5 Line 75-76) 'It fits when such a villain is a guest,

Romeo chooses to avoid confrontation and chooses to walk away. Romeo leaves the scene unharmed and alive. Although some may think that violence can solve problems , it does the opposite. Things can be talked out. Violence complicates

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare is often thought to be a play of endless love and passion. However, many readers come to the conclusion that although the play oozes out love, violence plays a big role as well. From the beginning of the play, pandemonium surrounded Verona, with fights breaking out all time. Sampson and Gregory are already speaking of violence, then Benvolio and Tybalt began to fight. This play began and ended with violence. The violence in this play is driven the by great Capulet-Montague feud. Both families are so caught up in each others hatred for one other that they cannot see the impact it has on their families. From the honour, love and power the two families hold, its gets reflected into violence which brings

Mahatma Gandhi states, “An eye for an eye only ends up making the world blind” (BBC). Readers see this occur in William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet. The play tells a tale of two star-crossed lovers from opposing sides of a long-held neighborhood feud. In the end, Romeo and Juliet take their lives for each other out of love. Throughout the play, many acts of violence are displayed.

Violence is a big problem in the world. As stated by the FBI, in only the U.S there is an estimated 367.9 violent crimes per 100,000 population. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.” Romeo and Juliet is a book/play based on the most famous love story of all time, the play tells the tale of a boy and a girl from different families who meet and fall in love.

Violence is something that plays a huge part in everyone’s life. It doesn’t matter whether you lived hundreds of years ago or living today. Violence is evident no matter what time period you look at. This said violence is a huge part of the theme of Romeo and Juliet because if it was not for the feud between the Montagues and Capulets this situation that Romeo and Juliet found themselves in would have never happened. Romeo and Juliet both come to a violent and tragic death that originated with violence. The play concludes with, “Go hence to have more talk of these sad things. / Some shall be pardoned, and some punished. / For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” (5.3 318-321) The two young lovers could have lived happy with each other if it was not for violence. Now that they are both dead, everyone else involved must face the fact that they played a

In the all-to popular romantic tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, and through feud between families, Shakespeare stages a conflict between reason and passion. There are two types of passion; passionate love and passionate violence. Passion is present throughout the whole play in one form or another. The key scenes that demonstrated the conflict between passionate love and reason are in the Balcony Scene- filled with their wedding vows- that occurs the night after he goes to the Capulet ball and when the Friar agrees to marry Romeo and Juliet together. Conflict between passionate violence and reason was the fight that resulted in the deaths of Mercutio and Tybalt. The death scene; however, was a mix of the two types of passion.

In William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet the two titular characters fall in love. Because of the age-old feud between their families they keep their love a secret for the sake of each others’ safety. Romeo and Juliet’s families, the Montagues and Capulets, hold a long-standing feud that has often been narrated with violence and aggression towards the other, even for their servants. The only people who know about Romeo and Juliet’s love are Romeo’s servant Balthasar, Juliet’s nurse, and Friar Laurence who agrees to marry them. In the balcony scene Juliet even warns Romeo of how dangerous it is for him to be speaking to her, “If they do see thee, they will murder thee” (Shakespeare 2.2.16-17).

Since the 1600s, one of the world’s most famous plays has been Romeo and Juliet. The star-crossed lovers for which the book is titled have been seen for centuries as a symbol for the boundless passion and contumacy of young love. Along with the romantic plot and Shakespeare’s mellifluous and graceful language, a ruthlessly violent culture is constantly at work, conclusively preventing a happy ending for the ill-fated couple. Peace theorist Johan Galtung created a theory of cultural violence, conjointly with structural violence, which can lead to direct violence in society. Culturally and structurally violent elements are culpable for the outcome of Romeo and Juliet because the structure of laws and ancestral feuds combined with the violent ideas of hating the other house and killing to solve problems create violence that lead to the denouement.

All audiences enjoy a perfect fairytale ending, but sometimes literature doesn’t end with wedding bells and love. In the work, Romeo and Juliet, the author William Shakespeare uses violent scenes to show that things will not always go the way people wish they would. In the events leading up to Romeo and Juliet’s many violent scenes occurred that changed the course of the work. For example, in the first fight of the book, the Capulet servants confronted the Montague servants, causing a fight between Tybalt and Benvolio.

shall firstly do a summery of the play and give a basic image of what

Theme – the reason behind why the playwright wrote the play. “Patterns of life”, a slice of reality.