Theme of Hatred and Revenge in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

Theme of Hatred and Revenge in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

How Shakespeare conveys the theme of hatred

and revenge throughout Romeo and Juliet.

The theme of hatred and revenge is present throughout the whole text.

I am going to identify and explore how each dramatic event can be

linked back to hatred and revenge or both and how this effects the

ending of this terrible tragedy.

At the start of the play Shakespeare manages to create an atmosphere

of unthinking violence which is shared by the entire community in

fewer than a hundred lines. Act 1, scene 1, line 70 spoken by citizens

"clubs, bills and partisans! Strike! Beat them down! Down with the

Capulets! Down with the Montague's." This shows the hatred but also

introduces the two main families.

Linked into the text we can see the social and historical aspects of

hatred and revenge, which are represented quite differently in the

modern film to the original script of drama work, but the same message

is portrayed to the audience. The film cuts out quite a large section

of the dialogues which were needed to set the scene, but in the film

this is visual and I think that the fewer words are stronger in

context so more effective. The actors still manage to get across the

emotions of the lines of the play. Both the text and the film show the

social aspects of hatred between the whole of Verona because everyone

becomes caught up in the violence which is started from the hatred

between the two families and each of the families show the historical

aspects of their hatred, which are sprung simply from history, each

generation of the families has been brought up to resent on...

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was performed only because of their parents feud, the hatred leads to

Juliet pretending she is dead which in turns lead to Romeo killing

himself over Juliet's supposed death which then leads Juliet to stab

herself and the tragedy to be unfolded by Friar Laurence. At the end

of the play we do see that some good has come out of this unexpected

tragedy- Montague and Capulet both agree to end their feud but it is a

shame that it had to result in the deaths of their only children

before they came to this agreement. Shakespeare also manages to create

an atmosphere of catharsis at the end of the play. This works very

well with the tragedies of Romeo and Juliet's death, which brings

together the emotions of the audience, purging them by the events of

this tragedy and ending on a contradictive, peaceful note.