Grade 9 Response: How is the theme of conflict shown in Romeo and Juliet?
Marked by a real teacher.
How is the theme of conflict shown in Romeo and Juliet? (30 Marks.)
Conflict. A word with many meanings and Shakespeare uses this theme to truly bring out the play. We witness as an audience that conflict is consistently throughout the play and appears to be the backbone of it. In one instance, Act 3, Scene 1 contains an amount of conflict, which results in the death of two young protagonists. We see that the scene is set when Benvolio- who speaks in blank verse at the start of the scene- states ‘the day is hot… these hot days, is the mad blood stirring.’ We see this foreshadowing technique has been utilized by Shakespeare to fore come the conflict. The noun ‘blood’ alerts the audience that ‘blood’ may be shed, this can create inner conflict within the audience, while they battle the suspense, as they fear who will die. We see the theme of conflict to augment when Mercutio engages with Tybalt to fight on. Mercutio calmly addresses Tybalt as ‘King of Cats,’ this was viewed as offensive in the Elizabethan Era as ‘Tybalt’ was a name of a cartoon Elizabethans were familiar towards. This stirs the conflict because it belittles Tybalt and insults his ego.
Conflict is added when Tybalt refers to Romeo as a ‘villain’; this creates more conflict as ‘villain’ was classed as an insult in the era and Tybalt –by doing this- instills marrment of Romeo’s reputation. Mercutio (being loyal to Romeo) takes none of this and further provokes Tybalt. But when he is killed under Romeo’s arm, the audience, as well as the other characters know Tybalt has played dirty. This creates personal conflict between Romeo and Tybalt, as Tybalt has done an act of evil. Shakespeare does this to manifest a neutral (as Mercutio was neither Capulet nor Montague) is a victim of the two ‘brawling… households’. Mercutio realizes this, thus curses upon ‘both households’: ‘A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me’. This delineates Mercutio wishes for an epidemic to spread over ‘both’ houses; this creates an idea that an ‘epidemic’ shall spread over both houses. Again, foreshadowing the deaths of Tybalt and Romeo- Shakespeare partly uses dramatic irony as we know Romeo will die, adding to the number of deaths caused by the families ‘quarrel’.
And that is not all. Conflict has a way on reaching every character in a number of ways and in Juliet’s case it tests her love and feelings.
Juliet is bedazzled when she first encounters Romeo and falls in love with him instantly, although hesitating in places due to a feeling she receives of being to ‘rash’ and ‘quick’. But she also has to battle with her internal conflict within, as she first finds out the person she has fallen for is a Montague- her family’s rival. We hear through her soliloquys; she ponders on the idea of why a name means so much. ‘O, be some other name! What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet’. We see Juliet first think Romeo ought to change his ‘name’ but instantly changes her own mind and asks herself ‘what is in a name’, thus she is trying to fathom up this nebulous issue. Shakespeare does this to delineate how Juliet sees no sense in her family’s mess of a ‘feud’.
Shakespeare manifests Juliet questioning by placing question (‘?’) and exclamation (‘!’) marks in her speech to connote her feelings are strong and inquiring. This informs the audience that Juliet must fight and conflict with herself to gather some sort of power to overcome this. Juliet evidently has inner conflict and it builds up as she has no one, except for the unreliable Nurse, to aid her and this bottling of feelings causes all her conflict to escalate inside.
As an audience of contempered and modern, we receive an indication that conflict has undesirable effects and Shakespeare brings this to his audience through his tragic but romantic play: Romeo and Juliet.
Check out this article for a summary of every scene:
May all of you do amazingly in your exams. Ameen. Just work hard- you’ve got this! Any questions, please do ask.
فَتَعَـٰلَى ٱللَّهُ ٱلْمَلِكُ ٱلْحَقُّ ۗ وَلَا تَعْجَلْ بِٱلْقُرْءَانِ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يُقْضَىٰٓ إِلَيْكَ وَحْيُهُۥ ۖ وَقُل رَّبِّ زِدْنِى عِلْمًۭا
-Exalted is Allah, the True King! Do not rush to recite ˹a revelation of˺ the Quran ˹O Prophet˺ before it is ˹properly˺ conveyed to you, (1) and pray, “My Lord! Increase me in knowledge.” ~The Qur’an 20:114
The Prophet (ﷺ) was eager to recite the Quran while it was being revealed to him through the angel Gabriel. So he (ﷺ) was told to take his time to learn it by heart once the verses are properly delivered to him.
