Romeo And Juliet Literary Analysis

Hawaiz Kaka

Mrs. Kent

ENG2DB-10

April 27, 2016

As seen in Hamlet and Macbeth, Shakespeare focuses a lot of his plays on tragedies. Romeo and Juliet is no different, a story of two lovers from feuding families that eventually die. But of course too much tragedy or romance will lead to a bored audience as the only thing that they see are characters dying and others falling in love. To provide a contrast to this boredom that would be found in such a tragic story an author uses humour to keep the audience entertained. Likewise, Shakespeare add humour in the play Romeo and Juliet by using various different literary elements, such as witty puns and sarcasm to help entertain the audience. Puns effectively enlighten the mood to help make this play less tragic. Shakespeare uses puns throughout the play to help entertain the audience. For example after Juliet is seemingly dead, Peter and the musicians quarrel. This jibe “I’ll re you and I’ll fa you. Do you note me?”(Shakespeare 4.5. 120-121) that Peter says to the Musicians shows the lightness of this scene. Although this is a tragic event in the play, Shakespeare adds this banter between Peter and the Musicians to show that this event isn’t as tragic as it first seems. As the audience already knows, Juliet is not really dead, she drank a vial to make it seem as if

Witty puns and sarcasm add a lot to make less significant parts of this play less tragic as they focus more on making the audience laugh rather than having them feel sad in certain parts of the play. Humour also helps the audience understand that this play isn’t as tragic as first thought, since at the end the Capulets and Montagues strengthen their ties. This shows how important humour is in a piece of literature as it never fails to keep the audience entertained and it serves as a reminder that a great thing will always come out of