In the two plays, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Macbeth’, the key characters transgress the social moral boundaries. However, Shakespeare manages to create sympathy towards the protagonists. In ‘Macbeth’, he creates sympathy for Macbeth as he shows the tragic downfall of a heroic hero in despair and how he was forced into all his wrong doings. Whereas in ‘Romeo and Juliet’, Shakespeare makes the audience feel sympathy towards the young couple as other people are also to blame for their relationship not happening and how they are ‘star crossed lovers’. In this essay, I am going to explain how Shakespeare manages to sympathize with these protagonists.
Passion outweighs reason at every point and Shakespeare wants to highlight the young love in this masculine society as well as show it is the men that cause conflict and a world of hate. Therefore, the audience feels a bond for the characters- especially Romeo and Juliet due to pity and admiration, and Piggy, Simon and Ralph as they are the targets of this boisterous, savage
You are also shown straight away that the play is going to be a tragedy. This is an affective way to start Romeo and Juliet because you are tolled straight away what the play is about; the fact that Shakespeare started the prologue as a sonnet is to a very effective technique as a sonnet is formally know as being a love poem starting with a problem and then ending with the solution. Shakespeare begins with two bawdy characters (Samson and Gregory) conversing and making crude sexual comments. This is the most basic portrayal of love as lust. This is good stage craft as there is contrast with more romantic movements.
Cherry seems to become more nutty when she falls for Lewis. But that’s what the audience wants to see, the normality of people turning mad because of love. Nowra is trying to cut out the fact that these people are really insane and hid it with the fact that love is what is important in this play, for people to understand that love makes you mad whether you are or not. As Julie says ‘Love is hallucinating without the
When Romeo first appears, Shakespeare uses a variety of oxymorons to portray him as a confused Petrarchan lover. Amidst an infatuated speech describing his confusion as to the unrequited ‘love’ he feels for Rosaline, Romeo lists a number of nouns with contrasting adjectives, including ‘bright smoke’ and ‘cold fire’. Shakespeare’s use of oxymorons parallels what appears to be a completely unstable state of mind, to show the audience the level of pain which a romantic non-reciprocal lover feels. Despite this, it is clear that Shakespeare included this technique to divide audience members in their interpretation of Romeo’s speech. Many audience members could interpret this in a slightly mocking way, scorning at Romeo’s exaggerative behaviour and perceiving it to be somewhat sardonic humour.
How does Miller make us admire Proctor more as the play progresses? Initially Proctor is shown as a self-loathing hypocrite, who has committed adultery with Abigail Williams. Miller presents Proctor with a flaw to make us not make our minds up about him fully. However as the play progresses he gains our admiration by confessing and redeeming his sins as he is motivated by truth and justice, and to challenge a corrupt authority. Although we see how destructive Proctor’s sin has been and how flawed he is as a result, we admire his determination to atone and sympathise with his dilemma.
It becomes clear that Hamlet did truly love Ophelia, yet hid it because he was a coward. The “ White Lie” is not only depicted through Hamlet denying his love but also putting a front up for the selfish betterment of his life style. After his outrageous lecture on self worth that Hamlet gives Ophelia, she grows incredibly mad, which ultimately leads to her death. Although the intentions of his lecture were clearly to hurt Ophelia and gain power over her, once he realizes she is dead he feels the need to express his actual love for her. His change of attitude grows confusing as he professes his dear love after her awful death, “ I loved Ophelia.
It was fate that brought these two opposite people together. Two people from two big prominent families who hate one another for some ancient and unknown reason were brought together by fate, but also by irony. Shakespeare could have told an easy love story, but it had to be one with an extreme paradox – love through hatred. Fate, dramatic irony and the visions that he kept giving to his audience, all showed that the two opposites were destined for each other no matter what the practical approach might have been. Juliet says “My only love sprung from my only hate” (1.5.52).
The scene begins when Hamlet is about to confront his mother about the events that had recently unfolded. Hamlet had been building up all his anger inside and he finally has the chance to confront her on how he feels about the current situation. Although Hamlet does not want to hurt his mother physically, he does want to get under her skin and make her suffer as much guilt as he has been experiencing. First of all, one verse that shows that Hamlet has been retaining anger is when he says: “Now could I drink hot blood And do such bitter business as the day Would quake to look on” (Shakespeare III.3.383-385). “Hot blood” pertaining to anger and temper because when people say someone is very hot blooded it could signify that they have a very short temper and can become very angry.
How does Shakespeare present the theme of jealousy in Othello? Firstly, jealousy is the main theme in the play. It basically takes over the character's lives causing them to do stupid things. For example, at the beginning of the play, Roderigo is already jealous of Othello as Othello has Desdemona and he does not. Another example of jealousy is at the end of the play where Othello thinks that Desdemona has been unfaithful towards him with Casio.