William Shakespeare 's Romeo And Juliet

From the very first page, the status quo of Verona has been set as Shakespeare starts off establishing this theme of masculinity by inserting scene 1 of act 1 into the book. As this quote shows, “Tis true; and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, are ever thrust to the wall. Therefore I will push Montague's men from the wall, and thrust his maids to the

Just by this extract from the play proves how women were treated more like objects than human beings during Shakespearean times.

Overall, this positions the audience to view women as strong characters who confront the stereotype of women as possessions in Elizabethan time.

Passage 1 is riddled with ideas of academia and sexuality. Stoppard uses witty, scholarly dialogue to convey the concealment of an affair from the precocious and not easily deceived child prodigy, Thomasina. Just prior to this passage, Thomasina has enquired into the meaning of 'carnal embrace', to which her tutor Septimus Hodge has given an evasive reply. Septimus is shocked when he is questioned by her, as those that are aged in their early teenaged years would not have conceptualised that thought yet. The passage, which takes place in Act 1, scene 1, forms the basis of an exposition in the play. The witty dialogue used by Stoppard to present Hodge (‘when carnal embrace is a sin, it is a sin of the flesh'), portrays him as a scholarly, lascivious,

From the start, there is a struggle for love between two couples mixed with deception, accusations, and counter-accusations. In order to maintain their interests, the characters have to use a brutal approach to their relationships. It signifies a kind of relationship between men and women in the Elizabethan world, when the play was written. Regarding the outer world, the use of violent speech language signifies what the society considers as normal relationship between men and women. The use of violence and brutality in competition for attention from women was a common practice. However, things have changed tremendously, and people can use other means to attract members of the opposite sex without being brutal and violent in speech and

Simply walking down the street can be a tense affair due to the feud between the two most powerful families, the Capulets and Montagues. Despite the fact that the families do not even know why they are fighting anymore, noblemen and even servants of opposing families taunt each other by attacking each other’s masculinity. Acting quickly on impulse, most men tend to think of their immediate needs first and make jokes that offend those who are considered “inferior.” To begin the play, Sampson, a Capulet servant, makes a crude joke when he states, “’Tis true, and therefore women, being the weaker vessels, / are ever thrust to the wall: therefore I will push / Montague’s men from the wall, and thrust his maids / to the wall” (Shakespeare 1.1.14-17). Men from different families are meant to defeat each other though duels and women to be conquered as merely objects serving to satisfy sexual desires (“As You Like It”).

Romeo & Juliet Throughout Romeo and Juliet there are multiple examples of feuds and violence throughout the play. First, within the opening scene of the play the servants of the Capulets and Montagues engage in a street fight. The Capulet servants Samson and Gregory bait Abram into confrontation by insulting his master. The quote from Sampson saying “But if you do,sir,I am for you. I serve as good a man as you.”

The prince shows up and puts an end to it with the threat of “If you ever disturb our streets again, your lives shall pay the forfeit of the peace!” If anyone were to fight in the streets again, he will have them killed for disturbing the peace. In act 2, scene 1, Tybalt challenges Romeo to a fight, Romeo had just been married and didn’t want to fight, so Mercutio stepped up. Tybalt killed Mercutio which put Romeo into a state of rage. Romeo accepted Tybalt’s challenge and Romeo ended Tybalt’s life.

In Scene I, Samson and Gregory are saying how much they hate the Montagues. When they see the Montagues-Abram and Balthasar, Sampson bites his thumb at them, and him and Abram begin to fight. Benvolio and Tybalt enter, and they fight. Later an Officer, Citizens, Capulet, Lady Capulet, Montague, Lady Montague, and following Prince Escalus enter. The Prince announces that they have fought in these streets three times, and if they do it again someone will be killed. He also says for Capulet to go with him, and Montague will talk with him later. Montague, Benvolio, and Lady Montague converse about Romeo, and

The common theme between Christopher Marlowe's play, Dido, Queen of Carthage in Act 4, Scene 3, lines 16-56 and poem "Elegiac II," book one, lines 1-52, is the theory of independence as masculine and oppression as feminine. It is evident that masculinity is tantamount to autonomy, and it is equal to true freedom from control from any outside force, spiritual or otherwise. Femininity is equivalent to human love, and it, or giving into it, is depicted as something that binds and makes one weak; it is oppressive and is an inability to be in a position of power. It means being controlled by something outside of oneself, and there is no sovereignty in femininity. Furthermore, to be in love, to be overcome with this force that is outside of oneself is to be conquered, and to be masculine is to be the conqueror, the builder, the designer, and the one that binds those that are feminine, however, the bound are not always necessarily female.

Based on Arthur Brooke’s Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet is perhaps Shakespeare’s most illustrious tragedy. The play centers around the love affair of Romeo, a Montague, and Juliet, a Capulet, against the backdrop of a vicious feud between their families. Set in Verona, a riparian urbs on the Adige River, the play chronicles the journey of Romeo and Juliet through their weeklong romance until their suicide. One of the hallmarks of the play is Shakespeare’s prolific focus on various drugs and poisons. These “remedies” are mainly plant-based, and besides offering evidence for Shakespeare’s detailed knowledge of botany and medieval toxicology, they “culminate [reach a climax] the plot of the play” (Tabor 81). By creating and sustaining intense tension between the structural elements that the play is built upon, these references ultimately precipitate the play’s dramatic conclusion and serve as an important layer that Shakespeare intentionally includes in the play to address various dichotomies in nature. These pharmaceutical references constitute the play’s central symbolic device by shifting the tone of the plot, strengthening antagonistic motifs, and emblematizing the Montague/Capulet feud.

Towards the beginning of the play, the bard lifts up his babes and makes them appear very strong and rebellious. Hermia is the first example. She was given three options regarding her marriage with Demetrius. They are Die, Become a nun, or marry Demetrius. She decides

Throughout the course of this essay I am going to discuss whether I think contemporary plays continue to experiment with form and content. Form means how we stage a play and perform it; this could be through mime, physical theatre, comedy, melodrama and many more. The playwright will suggest the best way to convey the drama to the audience but it is important to remember that directors can completely change the form of a play, and this is fairly common with stock material such as Shakespeare – done in modern dress, or with women playing men’s parts. On the other hand, content is the message the play carries through its themes and what the play is about. Form and content have always been experimented with; it isn’t something that has not

In a similar description, the poem compares both women with “ivory conduits coral cisterns filling” (Shakespeare 1234). This nature imagery bears the connotation of being gendered distinctly feminine in classical and early modern literature. Furthermore, these images highlight the overwhelming quality of the natural elements; things are filling, swelling, and being quenched, as if beyond the control of the women. As Shakespeare points out, the maid’s emotions have no basis in reason as there is “no cause but company of her drops’ spilling” (Shakespeare 1236). The poem even ventures so far as to claim that the “gentle sex” are prone to emotion devoid of logic to the point of self-inflicted violence—“they drown their eyes or break their hearts”—which becomes a haunting foreshadower of Lucretia’s suicide (Shakespeare 1239). The insinuation present in this snapshot of the patriarchal household is that women, when left to their own nature without male guidance, are easily overcome with emotion and thus rendered incapable of rationality. Shakespeare’s potent description of this interaction begins to reveal how such anti-feminist ideology was the lifeblood of patriarchal authority in monarchical Rome.

In 17th century England there was a major status quo that went by the name of patriarchy. Patriarchy is the idea of men controlling everything, from the household all the way up to the monarchy. In this idea of patriarchy women were thought as to needing a man in their life, whether that was a husband or father. The relationship between men and women was characterized as a woman should be a loyal servant to the man for taking care of her. With the idea of patriarchy in mind Thomas Middleton wrote the play, A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Patriarchy is a major theme of the play and tackles the issue. However, Middleton doesn’t place himself on a side for or against patriarchy. Instead Middleton uses many interesting, complex, and different