3.1.1.2The play at a glance
Two Verona families, the Montagues and Capulets, are locked in an ancient feud. Romeo, a Montague, meets Juliet, a Capulet, at a ball and they marry secretly the next day. Romeo kills Juliet's cousin Tybalt after Tybalt kills Mercutio, and is banished. To avoid marrying Paris, Juliet takes a potion that makes her appear dead. The message explaining the plan never reaches Romeo, who kills himself at her tomb; Juliet wakes, finds him dead and follows. The families are reconciled over the bodies.
The play was written in the 1590s. Elizabethan fathers had legal authority over their daughters' marriages, girls could marry very young, and the code of honour made refusing a public insult almost impossible for a young man.
- star-cross'd
- thwarted by fate, as though by the position of the stars
- the Chorus
- a single speaker who addresses the audience directly, used in the Prologue to reveal the ending in advance
- dramatic irony
- the audience knowing something a character does not, which the Prologue creates for the whole play
3.1.1.2Characters
Romeo changes register completely between Rosaline and Juliet. His early speech is full of borrowed Petrarchan clichés; with Juliet he shares a sonnet, which gives the two of them a single voice.
Juliet develops further and faster than anyone else in the play. She moves from an obedient daughter answering her mother in formal couplets to a young woman who deceives her family, takes a drug that may kill her, and dies by her own hand.
Mercutio is the sceptical counterweight to Romeo's romanticism, and the play changes irreversibly when he dies at its midpoint. Friar Laurence and the Nurse are the adults the lovers trust, and both fail them.
3.1.1.2Themes
Love in the play is not a single thing. Set the Nurse's physical view and Mercutio's bawdy mockery against Romeo's idealism and the shared sonnet at the ball, and the play becomes an argument about what love is rather than a celebration of it.
The feud is the true antagonist. Every death follows from it, and Mercutio's dying curse on both houses is fulfilled exactly.
Fate and choice are held in tension throughout: the Prologue calls the lovers star-cross'd, but every disaster has a human cause.
Common mistake
Treating the play as simply a love story. The Prologue announces the deaths in its first eight lines, so the audience watches a tragedy unfold, not a romance.
3.1.1.2Shakespeare's methods
Light and dark imagery runs from the balcony scene to the tomb. The lovers meet only at night, so their light is always set against darkness, and daylight repeatedly separates them.
The shared sonnet at the ball is the play's most quoted formal device: fourteen lines divided between two speakers who have not yet exchanged names.
The structure turns on Mercutio's death, which converts a comedy of young love into a tragedy within a single scene.
Worked example
Answer:
- The Prologue removes suspense so the focus falls on how, not what
- The feud, not fate, supplies every immediate cause
- Light and dark imagery structures the whole play
- Mercutio's death is the hinge between comedy and tragedy
AO1-AO4How this text is examined
This text is examined in Paper 1, Section A. The question is worth 34 marks and an extract from the play is printed, and the question asks you to start with that extract and then write about the play as a whole. Allow about 55 minutes.
The marks are divided as AO1 12 marks, AO2 12 marks, AO3 6 marks, AO4 4 marks. AO1 rewards a clear argument supported by well-chosen references. AO2 rewards analysis of how the writer achieves an effect, which means writing about choices rather than about events. AO3 rewards context used to deepen a reading of the text.
Common mistake
Retelling the plot. Narrative summary earns nothing under any assessment objective, however accurate it is. Every paragraph should be making a point about how or why, not about what happens.
Four of the marks are for AO4: vocabulary and sentence structures used to control meaning, and accurate spelling and punctuation. These are the cheapest marks on the paper and the easiest to lose by rushing the final paragraph.