Analysis of "Romeo and Juliet" and Its Essential Features

William Shakespeare occupies perhaps the most important place in world literature, this brilliant playwright and poet has no equal to this day. “Romeo and Juliet” is a tragic play, traditional for the Renaissance, telling about two young lovers who belonged to warring families. This romeo and juliet essay examples has an analysis of “Romeo and Juliet”, there are several features that distinguish it from ordinary plays by other authors.

Brief Analysis

The year of writing is 1594-1595. The story of creation “Romeo and Juliet” is a creative interpretation of the plot already available in the literature. The theme is the struggle with society and circumstances for the feeling of two loving people, love and death. The composition is a circular composition based on parallel confrontations in all 5 acts. Genre is a tragedy in 5 acts. The direction is romanticism.

History of Creation

In literary studies, there is quite a little information that can be considered reliable about the history of Shakespeare's creation of his immortal masterpiece. It is known that the plot and even the names of the characters have already appeared in literature, but they received a brilliant embodiment only in the tragedy of W. Shakespeare.

The writing of the tragedy is attributed to the years 1594-95. In 1597, the play was first published. The Roman poet Ovid had similar storytelling about the love of two young people from warring families. The basis for Shakespeare's work was the poem “The Tragic Story of Romeus and Juliet” by Arthur Brooke.

Interestingly, such a plot existed in world literature not only before, but also after Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. Many variations of this plot appear in the art to this day. A deep and thorough analysis of the origins of the plot of the work gives the right to believe that the story that happened to the lovers was valid in reality and preserved, as a legend, in oral form.

William Shakespeare took as the basis of the narrative only the plot of the work, his play describes 5 days of the life of lovers. A. Brook's action lasts about 9 months. The English poet and playwright changed the season, added several vivid scenes, and revised many essential details. His work is neither a parody nor a copy of any other, it is an original and original play, the glory of which has passed through the centuries.

Topic

The meaning of the work is revealed to the reader rapidly already in the first act: a person's life can be complete only when he has a choice. The theme of love, which permeates the whole work (the characters love, talk about the essence of this feeling, philosophize about the types of love) is revealed in many ways: mother's love, love for life, love and marriage, passion, unrequited love, family love. The nurse loves Juliet sincerely, in a motherly way, the main characters face the first most tremulous feeling in their lives, even the priest, respecting the love of young hearts, breaks the rules and crowns, lovers, without parental consent.

The problems of anger, revenge and unforgiveness are also strong in the overall outline of the play, they keep pace with love and death. The problems of the play are versatile, as is the life of the characters themselves. The idea of the play is the assertion of the human right to free choice in love. It is not difficult to determine what the play teaches the reader: you need to fight for your feeling, this is the meaning of human life. The lovers made the only possible conclusion: they were not destined to be together in their earthly life. No matter how scary it is to talk about such things at such a young age, however, the morality and morals of modern Shakespeare society were based on such values.

There is a theme of God-fighting in the tragedy, which critics consider quite weighty: a secret wedding, murders and revenge, attempts to deceive fate on the part of a priest, Romeo's participation in a masquerade dressed as a monk. Dialogues and monologues of the heroes of Shakespeare's tragedy have become the most quoted and recognizable in the entire world of literature. The arguments of young hearts about the essence of love turned out to be so vital that their lives went far beyond the boundaries of fiction and music.

Composition

The whole structural composition is based on symmetrical opposition. In the first act, the servants of the masters meet, in the second – the nephews of Montague and Capulet, then “the heads of the warring clans: duels, quarrels, feuds, murders” there are no trifles here, they play life big.

In the last act, the Montague and Capulet spouses appear on the stage, and the feud ends. Children find a new life in golden sculptures. The play has an exposition (the meeting of the servants of the opposing families), the beginning (the meeting of Romeo and Juliet at the ball), the climax (the scene in the crypt) and the denouement - the scene of reconciliation of families and the speech of friar Lorenzo.

The composition of the play acquires a ring structure precisely due to parallel conflicts. The monologues of the main characters about conscience, passion, love and honour form a special layer in the composition of the play: they are the inner essence of the work.

Genre

The tragedy was popular in the Renaissance, this genre provided for an insoluble conflict and a very tragic ending. However, from the point of view of the semantic component, the lovers still won, and they managed to reunite. In terms of content, love wins, it triumphs over revenge and anger because warring families reconcile with the lifeless bodies of their children.

Shakespeare's tragedies are special for their sensuality, intensity and acute tragedy. The peculiarity of the tragedy “Romeo and Juliet”, which belongs to the early period of the writer's work, is its satirical saturation. In the mouths of many characters, the author puts subtle humour and soft irony. Several centuries later, Shakespeare's tragedies became the standard of this genre. During the 20th century, the play was filmed in many countries about 50 times.

In act 5 scene 3

The deaths of Romeo and Juliet occur in a sequence of complex stages: first, Juliet drinks a potion that makes her seem dead. Thinking she is dead, Romeo then drinks the poison, which actually kills him. Seeing him dead, Juliet pierces herself through a heart with a dagger. Their parallel use of mysterious potions gives their deaths a symmetry that is broken by the dramatic blow of Juliet's dagger.

Social and private forces converge in the suicides of Romeo and Juliet. Paris, Juliet's future husband, challenges Romeo, her real husband, contrasting the embodiments of Juliet's lack of power in the public sphere with her very real ability to give her heart to whomever she wishes. With the arrival of the Prince, the law imposes itself, seeking to restore peace in the name of public order and government. Montague and Capulet arrive, again discussing family tensions.

None of these forces can have any effect on young lovers. We have seen how Romeo and Juliet have tried again and again to change the world with the help of language, so that their love has a place for a peaceful existence. This language, although powerful at the moment, will never be able to withstand the enormous forces of the social world. Having committed suicide, the lovers believe that they can escape from the world that oppresses them.

Further, in the final cruelty of their death, they transform this world. The enmity between their families ends. Prince Escalus “the law” recognizes the honor and value due to lovers. In dying, love has conquered everything, its passion manifests itself as the brightest and strongest. It seems that the words of Brother Lawrence have finally come true: “These cruel pleasures have a cruel end And die in their triumph”. The intense passion of Romeo and Juliet surpassed all other passions and, having come to its violent end, forced these other passions to subside.

Conclusion

There is a great irony in the fact that in death Romeo and Juliet created a world that would allow their love to live. This irony really exists, and it is tragic. Because of their impulsive, desperate attempts to preserve their love, Romeo and Juliet lost the opportunity to enjoy the same love and experience the peace that came as a result of the cessation of enmity. At the end of the play, we not only feel crushed by the rash act that Romeo and Juliet committed to perpetuate their love, but also saddened by the unnecessary loss of two young lives. Their deaths are not meant to be glorified or idealized, but rather to show what desperate and tragic measures, in the opinion of lovers, they should go to in order to preserve their love.