Romeo and Juliet in the Time of Elizabeth

The folllowing sample essay on All Are Punished discusses it in detail, offering basic facts and pros and cons associated with it. To read the essay’s introduction, body and conclusion, scroll down.

“All are punished” is a line said by the ruler of Verona, Prince Esculus and probably bests sums up the well-known tragedy by William Shakespeare.William Shakespeare the author of the play wrote the play during the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was set in Italy to suck up to the Queen by saying that Italy was in a bad condition because of its bad monarchs whereas England was in a great condition because of its brilliant ruler.

After the chorus has left we quickly see the third battle that has taken place in Verona involving the Montagues and the Capulets because of an argument that took place so long ago that no-one knows how it happened in the first place. Here the battle is started by servants and this because to servants were part of the family and if there was a fight they to be involved.

The servants are joking about raping the other families female servants. However the joking soon turn to horror when the fighting and killing begins.In the paragraph we also see how the families are not all “2.4 families”. Lady Capulet mocks her spouse when asks for a sword to join the fight by saying he should have a crutch.

This is probably because she is resentful that she was forced to marry Capulet.

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At this time women were considered to be the property of their men, be it their husband or father, and so if you were told to marry someone by your father you married them. These arranged marriages were for peace, money land, etc.. In the play, Juliet is forced into agreeing to marry Paris.As you can see it is this family dispute that is responsible for causing many of the fights and the deaths.

The first person to die is Mercutio. He is killed in a fight because he is ashamed that Romeo, a Montague, will not fight Tybalt, a Capulet, and so rather than letting the family name be disgraced he takes Romeo’s place. Fighting like this was common in the time the play was set. Just like in West Side Story, an adaptation of the play, and in many cities today rival gangs would fight each other however they would not want to kill each other but hurt each other and so as shown in Franco Zeffirelli’s Film in 1968 Tybalt was probably repentant that he had killed Mercutio.

Romeo is blamed by Mercutio for stepping in and thus allowing Tybalt to hit him. At first everyone thinks that Mercutio is joking about the extent of his injury, he is known for his sarcasm and foolishness as we are shown in his Queen Mab speech.When he sees that Mercutio is dead then Romeo is overcome with anger. He haslost someone who is like a brother to him and whom he loves very much. He is so overcome with hate that anger takes control of his mind and he only wants to kill Tybalt.

Romeo, who is now married to Juliet, goes after Tybalt and kills him. Romeo is then told by Benvolio to leave for he knows that he will be killed for the price of murder is death.The Prince now enters. He himself is partially responsible for the deaths in the play. He is not a murderer but in this scene he says how his “mercy is a killer” and even though it is paradox is very true, if he had been more harsh on the people then many of the deaths would not have happened. As punishment Romeo is exciled from Verona.

News of this punishment kills Lady Montague, Romeo’s mother. The parents in the story are also responsible for the deaths in this play. The main set of parents are the Capulet parents. Capulet is in some ways a warm, loving father, in others he is cold and heartless. As mentioned the role of women was to do what the man in their lives wanted. When the Count asks Capulet for Juliet’s hand he is reluctant unlike most fathers would have been and says to wait two years because Juliet is still “a stranger in the world,”. However later in the play he is not so warm when she refuses to marry Paris.

Lady Capulet on the other hand is not close at all to her daughter.She does not know how old her daughter is, she finds it hard to talk to her daughter alone as we see when she introduces the idea of marriage to her and she needs the nurse to be there and when Juliet refuses to marry Paris, Lady Capulet, unlike most mothers, does nothing to help her argue against her father. She infact finds it hard to be close to anyone, however many people and I think that it may have been that Lady Capulet was having an affair with Tybalt. In Zeffirelli’s film we see how Tybalt is angered when Romeo dances with Lady Capulet and in the play Lady Capulet seems to mourn Tybalt’s death more tha anyone.

The Montagues are seldom mentioned in the play, however unlike the Capulets they seem to love there child very much. In the first scene Montague seems to be worried about Romeo and as mentioned Lady Montague dies when she realises that her son it to be exciled.With parents like that both Romeo and Juliet are forced to find other people to turn to.

Romeo turns to Friar Lawrence and Juliet turns to the Nurse. The Friar is Romeo’s confidant. He knows about the feuding between the families and he also knows about how Romeo felt about Rosaline. He is the one who marries the two lovers and he organises for Romeo to go to Mantua and for Juliet to take drug and so he in my opinion is very much to blame, so much so that Juliet wonders if the Friar has given her a poison instead of a drug. In a similar way the Nurse is the person who Juliet turns to. At the time at which the play was set, Aristocratic familie s had “wet nurses” to breast feed their children rather than the mother.

The Nurse was Juliet’s wet nurse and so they share an intimate bond. She is invoved in getting the two married and getting Romeo to Juliet’s bedroom.The play has many themes within it. Shakespeare was interested in the difference between youth and old age, love and hate, man and woman. Juliet’s coming of age is a very important part of the play. Juliet starts of being a little innocent girl who does as she is told but as the play develops she becomes maturer; for example at the time it was customary for the mother to stay with her daughter on the night before she was to be married and tell her about the “facts of life”, however when Lady Capulet offers to stay with her she tells her mother mother not to worry saying that she probably has something better to do.Infact in the play she is the one who organises everything like the meetings of the two lovers and so it is poetically correct that the final line be “Juliet and her Romeo” which is irnoic firstly because the title of the the play is “Romeo and Juliet” and also because she is a woman.

Juliet also “falls for the first man she sees”. The ball is Juliet’s first ball and until Romeo come along she had probably never heard anyone speak like that.At first Romeo’s words when he talks to Juliet are “manufactured” but as he falls in love with Juliet his words become simpler but truer.In the play language differs. The best example of this is in Act IV Scene 5 when everybody thinks that Juliet is dead, the “Upper Class” People express their sadness by using poetry whereas the Nurse who is of the “Lower Class” can only use prose. The upper class tend to talk in blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter. An iamb is two syllables have a “beat” to them. The first syllable is pronounced unstressed and the second is stressed. In iambic pentameter there are five iambs.

So for instance in Act II scene 2 line 2 Juliet says “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?” She is using iambic pentameter.Fate to has a big part to paly in the play. The play makes us wonder if one thing had been different would there have been the blood shed. Another time is while Romeo is in Mantua and Balthasar comes to tell about the so called death of Juliet and he asks if there is a letter from the friar and considers waiting in case there is a letter from the friar.

On another level it makes us wonder if we are we free to make our own decisions or is there aomoene above who decides our destiny?The last scene sees our protagonists take there lives. When Romeo kills Paris, Paris’s last wish is to be placed next to Juliet. Romeo does this even though Paris was in love with his wife. He knows how it is to be in love with Juliet and it took Paris about the same time to fall in love Juliet as it did him to. The two lovers then see each other to be dead and so kill themselves. It now the task is left to Friar Lawrence who in my opinions more responsible than the rest for the deaths to explain. In the end the feud is ended but at a great cost asAll Are Punished.

In my opinion the play is good guide to life. It teaches us about love and hate, man and woman. It teaches us the possibility of fate. The Play being so famous is one of its downfalls. Most people will know the ending before they read the start and so it spoils their understanding and appreciation of it.