Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a well-known tragedy with its powerful reflection of love. It is a love story in a way, Romeo is a symbol of romance but it is not just about love but tragedy. Each character has a feature of them, for example, Mercutio is full of humor. The play has lots of contrasts. Tragedy with comedy, love with hate, death with love. The play includes some features from real life. The events in the play can be regarded as the life itself. It carries a part of life, similar to real life.

Shakespeare is reorganizing a folktale with this theater play. The story of Romeo and Juliet does not belong to him at first glance. It is based on a folktale like some other plays of him. It is an old tale from the early 1400s. Shakespeare chose to develop this story not only because of its popularity but also because of its themes such as star-crossed love, (“Star-crossed lovers” refers to any lovers whose affection for each other is doomed to end in tragedy) paradoxes between love and hate or comedy and tragedy. He changed the story slightly to make it unique = to create a Shakespearean version.

One of the fundamental features of the play is the minor characters. Their roles are significant in terms of developing the story. Shakespeare emphasizes the oppositions and similarities between characters. He used the minor characters to support the main/major characters. The Nurse and Mercutio are important as minor characters. For example, Mercutio contrasts with Romeo, and The Nurse contrasts with Juliet. While Mercutio is witty and funny, his friend, Romeo is a dreamy, immature person. To understand Romeo’s real personality, Shakespeare uses Mercutio. While Juliet’s nurse is earthly, Juliet has a spiritual personality. The minor characters give clues about the path of Romeo’s development like Paris. With minor characters, we can read the real personalities of major characters.

Shakespeare uses drama and humor at the same time to increase the dramatic tension. He used parallel and similar scenes. He shows the tensions between society vs lovers, death vs love, and age vs youth. These binary oppositions (juxtaposition) create the dramatic tension. This technique was his primary message in the play. Imagery is also important. Shakespeare used images to create inner coherence. For example, stars, seasons, darkness, light. The imagery creates unity and richness in the story. Juliet sees Romeo as light. Dualities in nature are important as a theme; man vs woman, bad vs good, good vs evil. The death of Romeo and Juliet is tragic but also it brings a new life to Verona. This is also a duality, death vs new generation. Shakespeare gives these dualities to say that nothing is purely good or evil, everything contains both at the same time. The message is everything in nature has good and bad at the same time.