Romeo and Juliet
The protagonist of Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet is Romeo Montague. Most of the play's action centers on him and his passionate affection for Juliet. At first Romeo experiences unrequited love with Rosaline but when he sets eyes on Juliet, he immediately forgets Rosaline. However, his love of Juliet is forbidden and eventually their romance results in their deaths. Because Romeo is the central character of the play and the force behind the plot, he is the protagonist.

While there is no central antagonist in the play, Tybalt best fits that role. A young, rash Capulet, Tybalt stands in Romeo's way from the very beginning when he notices Romeo at the Capulet dinner. When he attempts to attack Romeo, the elder Capulet must restrain him. Later, he challenges Romeo to a duel. However, Romeo refuses to fight and instead his dear friend Mercutio fights in his place and dies.…...

To Tybalt, he cries: "I do protest I never injur'd thee, / but love thee better than thou canst devise." His language is insistent, but Mercutio's death is more than he can bear: he takes it personally and is blinded by the abuse he feels that he has suffered. His language changes from insistence to accusation. First, he feels his pains: "This gentleman… / My very friend, hath got his mortal hurt / in my behalf; my reputation stain'd / ith Tybalt's slander" (3.1.73-76). Then, he turns to blame -- and the first person he blames is the very same person he has vowed to love earlier that same day: Juliet. "O sweet Juliet! / Thy beauty hath made me effeminate, / and in my temper soften'd valour's steel!" (3.1.77-79). hen Tybalt returns, Romeo has stoked his own rage and says, "Fire-ey'd fury be my conduct now!" (3.1.90). One…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. Bartleby. Web. 26 Apr 2012.

Romeo and Juliet: A Tale of Love and Anxiety
Shakespeare's story of Romeo and Juliet is often accepted as the tragic story of two lovers who cannot be together. Romeo is part of the Montague family, which has a long history of feuding with Juliet's family, the Capulets. Romeo and Juliet meet and instantly fall in love. The tragedy is that they cannot be together because of their feuding families. In their attempt to escape their families and be together, they both end up tragically dying. In this view of the story as the tragic tale of two lovers, it is accepted that Romeo and Juliet are simply destined to be together and cannot ignore the love they have for each other. hile this is a commonly accepted view of the story, it is not the only way the story can be seen. The characters of Romeo and Juliet can also…...

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Works Cited

Everett, B. Young Hamlet: Essays on Shakespeare's Tragedies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,1989.

Kristeva, J. Tales of Love. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987.

Shakespeare, W. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Washington Square Press, 1992.

Like Romeo, Juliet believes that the only solution is committing suicide, but the Friar tells her of a secret potion, a drug that will make her only appear dead for almost two days. The Friar tells Juliet to take it the night before her wedding. Meanwhile, he will send a note to Romeo to tell him about this secret plan. For Juliet, this appears to be the only plan that could work, that is why she decides to accept it no matter what happens. "I wake before the time that Romeo / Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point! / Shall I not, then, be stifled in the vault, / to whose foul mouth no health some air breathes in, / and there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? / or, if I live, is it not very like, / the horrible conceit of death and night, / Together…...

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Works Cited

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare."  http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/ 

Cole, Douglas. Twentieth Century Interpretations of Romeo and Juliet. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970.

Spurgeon, Caroline. Shakespeare's Imagery and What it Tells Us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935.

Berry, Ralph. Shakespeare in performance: castings and metamorphoses.

Romeo and Juliet: Love or Infatuation?
illiam Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet," contains some of the most quoted lines in literature. It is the ultimate love story, the epitome of romance. However, this is not a story of deep bonded love, but rather one of deep infatuation. This is actually a story of puppy love carried to the extreme. One gets the impression that had these two, Romeo and Juliet, lived another week or even another day, they would have become infatuated with someone else, particularly Romeo, and been expressing undying devotion to a new face by the next phase of the moon.

Juliet has "not seen the change of fourteen years," and thus, her suitor, Paris, is advised to "let two more summers wither in their pride, ere we may think her ripe to be a bride."

Therefore, Juliet cannot be any older than thirteen years. She is basically still a child.…...

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Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet.

 http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/ romeo_juliet/full.html

Endnotes

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet.

Romeo and Juliet
illiam Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is considered the epitome of romantic text. hen someone talks about doomed love or true love, they always go back to Romeo and his paramour. So much is made of the love story between the two, that the tragedy of the events has come to be misinterpreted as adding to the romance. ith this misunderstanding has become this notion that Romeo and Juliet are interchangeable characters, their gender and their name being the only thing that divides the two as individuals. This is entirely untrue. hen you do a close reading of the play and at the actual words Shakespeare uses, it becomes evident that Romeo and Juliet are indeed very different people. Romeo is controlled by his impulses, whether they are to fight or to love or to die. Juliet, on the other hand is more methodical and though she ultimately makes…...

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. Romeo and Juliet. New York: Amulet, 2007. Print.

This makes the film Juliet seem more mature and alienated, although the cinematic portrait of Romeo as somewhat estranged from his boisterous male friends, such as Mercutio's dim view of women, is consistent with Shakespeare's portrait. However, in the Renaissance Shakespeare, Romeo does not attempt to physically touch Juliet in the first balcony scene. In the film the more 'knowing' lovers soon transgress the physical boundaries of the balcony.
The unavoidability of fate was an important idea of the Renaissance era during which Shakespeare wrote. Also important, well into the Baroque era was the question of how much respect and deference a child owed his or her parents in terms of selecting a marital partner. Shakespeare sides with the lovers in their passion, but clearly shows how Romeo and Juliet's love upsets the rulership of Verona, and how society is harmed as well as helped. Good aspects to society, such…...

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Works Cited

Romeo and Juliet." Directed by Baz Lurman. 1996.

Romeo and Juliet." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc. 3 Nov. 2005 http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wb/Article?id=ar743567.

Shakespeare, William. "Romeo and Juliet." Originally produced 1594 or 1595. Shakespeare Homepage. Maintained by MIT 2003.  http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/ romeo_juliet

Romeo and Juliet: Act II Close Reading of one of Juliet's speeches from "The Balcony Scene," Act II, Scene II -- the theme of 'star crossed' (i.e. doomed) love
JULIET

ell, do not swear: although I joy in thee,

I have no joy of this contract to night:

It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be

Ere one can say 'It lightens.' Sweet, good night!

This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,

May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.

Good night, good night! As sweet repose and rest

Come to thy heart as that within my breast!

The balcony scene of "Romeo and Juliet" has provided modern romantic tragedy with one of its most long-standing images of young love and beauty. The play's most familiar image is that of young and beautiful Juliet standing above her beloved Romeo on a balcony while professing her affection for the honest and…...

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Work Cited

Shakespeare, William. "Romeo and Juliet." Text available online at The Literature Network. .  http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/romeo_and_juliet/10//

Romeo and Juliet
Love and Hate in Romeo and Juliet

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is a play about both love and hate, and can be viewed as both a comedy and a tragedy. The comic structure according to the ancients was social in nature and ended with the restoration of social order. Tragedy was personal -- it was used primarily, as Aristotle said, to effect a kind of catharsis (or cleansing of the emotions) through the witnessing of a great man falling. Romeo and Juliet employs two structures to show the struggle between love and hate. Love, Shakespeare suggests, is ultimately more important, as the feuding Capulets and Montagues show at the play's conclusion, "burying their strife," finally, with the death of their children. The hatred between the two families, however, adds the tragic element to the drama -- it is the hero's and the heroine's deaths that bring the families together.…...

This signal or turn in the poem is called the volta.
The other type of sonnet is called the English sonnet. Many sonnets were written in the English language in the Italian style, which can seem confusing. For this reason, the English sonnet is also called the Shakespearian sonnet, as Shakespeare is the most famous writer to have used this form. The poems are in iambic pentameter, just like English-language Italian sonnets, and have fourteen lines, rhyme structure, and even a sort of volta, but that is where the similarity between the English ad Italian sonnets ends. The Shakespearian sonnet is arranged in three quatrains, each four lines long, and a closing couplet. The rhyme scheme usually stays consistent for each quatrain, but the rhymes themselves change, and the final two lines of the poem rhyme with each other which is known as an heroic couplet, resulting in a rhyme…...

Romeo and Juliet is complex, because of several reasons. First, the two protagonists are young and, as a consequence, their relationship has all the immaturity that comes with the age, as well as the need to dramatize everything, including the need to take drastic measures when things don't go the right way (which helps to explain why the two characters die in the end).
Second, they are members of two feuding families in Verona, which adds to the general complicated erotic scenario. ecause of the feud, their relationship cannot develop in a normal manner, like the relationship between teenagers would otherwise. They need to hide, to plot in order to be able to meet and be together, to go against their families. Third, their relationship develops during a generally complicated time. The Renaissance is a period of rebirth for humanity, but the times have certain rules, particularly if one compares…...

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Bibliography

1. Cooney, J, (1998). Romeo & Juliet: Romeo. On the Internet at Last retrieved on December 5, 2013http://pages.towson.edu/quick/romeoandjuliet/romeo.htm.

2. Peele, Stanton, (2008). Romeo and Juliet's Death Trip: Addictive Love and Teen Suicide. Psychology Today. On the Internet at   Last retrieved on December 5, 2013http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/addiction-in-society/200811/romeo-and-juliets-death-trip-addictive-love-and-teen-suicide .

omeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare. Specifically it will discuss the influence on the lovers' lives of destiny or fate. In the productions of "omeo and Juliet," the two main characters' personal choices cannot defy their destiny (or fate) that is written in the stars. Nor does the feud between the two families justify their ultimate actions.
omeo and Juliet are fated lovers, and all of these productions make that very clear. The feud between their families may have torn them apart, but it certainly did not justify their taking their own lives. That they both die because of a misunderstanding and miscommunication only shows that their ultimate fate was exactly what was meant to happen. Their destiny led them to their deaths, and to the situation that led them down the path to their deaths. omeo and Juliet could not escape their fate, even though today it seems as…...

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References

Bloom, Harold, ed. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.

Brians, Paul "Romeo and Juliet." Washington State University. 2 Feb. 2000. 10 May 2005.

< http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/love-in-the-arts/romeo.html

Editors. "Romeo and Juliet." Twentieth Century Fox. 1996. 10 May 2005.

play Romeo and Juliet written by William Shakespeare during the Elizabethan Times in the late 1500s with four modern day movie adaptations: West Side Story directed by Robert Wise in 1961, Romeo and Juliet directed by Baz Luhrmann in 1996, Shakespeare in Love directed by John Madden in 1998 and Romeo Must Die directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak in 2000. The findings conclude that Romeo Must Die has little to do with the original play in terms of plot and passion. Shakespeare in Love evokes some of the passion that Romeo and Juliet had, but deviates substantially in events. While the movie Romeo and Juliet comes closest to the story line of the original play, only West Side Story succeeds in capturing the romantic passion first relayed by Shakespeare.
There is a lot in common between the play Romeo And Juliet and the movie West Side Story. This movie parallels not…...

Teaching Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet"
"Sometimes parents just don't understand.' What teenage student does not understand the importance of this truth in his or her daily life? And what phrase more succulently sums up the basic theme of "Romeo and Juliet?" This is why so many modern composers and filmmakers with an eye upon drawing in an adolescent audience have found inspiration with the Elizabethan tragedy. Over the course of this century alone, audiences have been treated to modernized retellings of the classic, like Baz Lurman's recent film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes to "West Side Story's" contemporary musical setting of the Montagues and the Capulets in New York City. Yet teachers are often almost as intimidated about teaching Shakespeare as their students are about learning about him.

Why are we as teachers do intimidated by Shakespeare? Of course, teachers wish to make the play historically comprehensible, rather than to merely…...

Critic Bloom continues, "But it could be said also that the audience would understand that omeo, as a lover-hero, really belongs to another religion, the religion of love, which doesn't collide with Christianity or prevent him from confessing to Friar Laurence, but nonetheless has different standards of what's good and bad" (Bloom 2000, 159). Thus, a strong love like omeo and Julie profess for each other, is like a drug or religion, creating another link to a theme of this play. Just as a religious zealot can become immersed in their beliefs, zealous lovers can become immersed in each other, with fateful results, as this play clearly shows.
Birth and death play a central role in the imagery of the play, too. Early in the play, omeo refers to his love for osaline as a living death. Critic Hager continues, "omeo says: 'She hath forsworn to love, and in that…...

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References

Bloom, Harold, ed. 2000. William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers.

Brown, Carolyn E. 1996. Juliet's Taming of Romeo. Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 36, no. 2: 333+.

Charlesbois, Elizabeth. 2006. Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Bulletin 24, no. 3: 92+.

Ecker, Elizabeth, and M.G. Aune. 2005. Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare Bulletin 23, no. 4: 109+.

Full confession.  We find Romeo and Juliet to be one of Shakespeare’s least appealing plays, and one of the reasons is because, while the theme of truth (and the related theme of lies) plays a significant role in the play, there is also the questions of whether the characters are even old enough to possess the self-awareness that is required for lying about feelings. 

When Romeo professes his love for Juliet, she wonders if his words are true.  Her worries are based in the fact that, even at her young age, Juliet seems to know that sometimes boys....

The first thing you need to do is understand what a theme is.  A theme is an idea in a movie.  Many people think of themes as the main idea, but a movie may have a central theme and several other themes.  If you are not sure how to identify a movie’s theme, think about the things in a movie that you want to talk about after you watch it or that leave you thinking about the movie. While themes can spur a number of different discussions, you should be able to describe the them concisely, generally....

Shakespeare may be the most popular broad topic for essays in English classes.  He wrote some of the most well-known works in the English language and, while he is known for his plays, he is also known for poetry.  English essays may focus on his works, but it is also possible to write compelling essays about Shakespeare’s life, including the enduring popular topic of whether Shakespeare was the true author of the works credited to him. 

Here are some essay title suggestions:   

1. Bringing Home the Bacon: Questions About the Authorship of Shakespeare’s Plays
2. The Real Tragedy of....

Romeo and Juliet is one of the best-known of all of Shakespeare’s plays.  The tale of star-crossed lovers has made the names Romeo and Juliet synonymous with hopeless love stories, though their questionable decision-making and shallow view of love has prevented many from completely embracing their story as a romance.  What is clear is that while the stories in the character all play lip service to the idea of family, community, and clan loyalties, they all act in their own self-interest in an effort to pursue their own happiness.  Focusing on that would be a....