Act 4, scene 5 The Nurse finds Juliet in the deathlike trance caused by the Friar’s potion and announces Juliet’s death. Juliet’s parents and Paris join the Nurse in lamentation. Friar Lawrence interrupts them and begins to arrange Juliet’s funeral. The scene closes with an exchange of wordplay between Capulet’s servant Peter and Paris’s musicians. This system placed God at the top, followed by angels, noble-men, men, women and then animals and plants Mercutio’s curse comes true at the end of the play when a plague prevents the friar’s important message from getting to Romeo When Juliet is disowned for defying the social norms , Shakespeare shows the impact of family conflict in Renaissance culture It is also true that, of the two, though Juliet is younger than Romeo, she is more mature and passionate in deciding to get married to Romeo. She accepts Romeo as her partner despite being fully aware of the enmity that exists between the two families.

Known to the Elizabethans as ague, Malaria was a common malady spread by the mosquitoes in the marshy Thames. The swampy theatre district of Southwark was always at risk. King James I had it; so too did Shakespeareï¿&fraq12;s friend, Michael Drayton. Read on... Shakespeare situates this maturation directly after Juliet’s wedding night, linking the idea of development from childhood to adulthood with sexual experience. Indeed, Juliet feels so strong that she defies her father, but in that action she learns the limit of her power. Strong as she might be, Juliet is still a woman in a male-dominated world. One might think that Juliet should just take her father up on his offer to disown her and go to live with Romeo in Mantua. That is not an option. Juliet, as a woman, cannot leave society; and her father has the right to make her do as he wishes. Though defeated by her father, Juliet does not revert to being a little girl. She recognizes the limits of her power and, if another way cannot be found, determines to use it: for a woman in Verona who cannot control the direction of her life, suicide, the brute ability to live or not live that life, can represent the only means of asserting authority over the self. Meanwhile, Benvolio meets Romeo and learns that Romeo is madly in love with Rosaline, who does not love him and insists on remaining chaste. In the final scene, the Prince declares that all of the towns is punished: “See what a scourge is laid upon your hate”

Audiences are introduced to Romeo as a character who understands the connections between love and hate The servants discuss women as “weaker vessels” in the first scene, alluding to their low status in Elizabethan society According to Romeo, Juliet seems to hang upon the cheek of night, like a jewelled earring hanging against the cheek of an Ethiopian lady. Many of these plays were very successful both at court and in the public playhouses. In 1613, Shakespeare retired from the theatre and returned to Stratford-upon-Avon. He died and was buried there in 1616. Later, Mercutio delivers a s oliloquy about Queen Mab; the speech suggests daydreams and fantasies about love are a waste of time

Sampson and Gregory, two servants of the house of Capulet, stroll through the streets of Verona. With bawdy banter, Sampson vents his hatred of the house of Montague. The two exchange punning remarks about physically conquering Montague men and sexually conquering Montague women. Gregory sees two Montague servants approaching, and discusses with Sampson the best way to provoke them into a fight without breaking the law. Here, the chorus tells the audience the outcome of events to build dramatic irony and create tension In the Prologue , the c horus describes a feud , where “civil blood makes civil hands unclean”, connoting the impurity of violenceThe Elizabethans believed that the stars, planets and gods were powerful over human lives, and this line begins to question the influence of fate in the violence The Prologue is a s onnet which introduces the play’s theme of honour, subverting the tradition of sonnets as Italian poems about c ourtly love

Act 4, scene 3 Juliet sends the Nurse away for the night. After facing her terror at the prospect of awaking in her family’s burial vault, Juliet drinks the potion that Friar Lawrence has given her. Romeo uses two similes to describe Juliet’s extraordinary beauty. The first simile is deployed in the linesThen we come to Act III Scene II, where we find Juliet waiting in her father’s orchard for her husband, Romeo’s, arrival. Juliet, unaware of what has just happened, waits out the passing of the day. She is more impatient than ever, for, that night Romeo is to come to her as her husband. At the opening of the scene, Juliet delivers an impassioned soliloquy, popularly known as ‘Juliet’s invocation to the night’. In her soliloquy, Juliet urges the sun on to its setting in the West, so that night may arrive sooner. She longs for the shelter of darkness when Romeo can come to her unseen. The dark suits lovers, for love, is blind and the beauty of lovers is enough light for them. There are 31 lines in this soliloquy but only 9 lines (lines 17 to 25) are prescribed for your study. The vast majority of Elizabethans would have been Christian, and the Church played a central role in a family’s life The friar’s dialogue refers to nature as opposing forces present in all things: good and evil, light and dark, love and hate, religion and magic, old and young He tells himself that he had never felt so much in love because he had never seen anyone truly beautiful like Juliet until that night. Romeo is so overwhelmed by her beauty that he tells himself that when that dance is over, he will watch her where she stands and will touch her hand and make his coarse hand blessed. This time, he shouts his frustration at Fate’s decision to make him “Fortune’s fool”, again implying he has little a utonomy over his life