MB UNIUD

ROMEO AND JULIET

Summary:
There is a story of two noble families  Montague and Capulet of Verona that are in war.  Paris wants to marriage Juliet and he goes dancing mask , and Juliet's mother wants to convince her to accept his offers. Romeo is in love with Rosaline belongs to Capulet , so Mercuzio and Benvolio want to destract him and go dancing. Romeo meets Juliet and they fall in love. After the ball, Romeo goes into the Capulets' courtyard and overhears Juliet on her balcony vowing her love to him. Romeo makes himself known to her and they agree to be married. But, the next day, after that Romeo and Juliet went to Friar Laurence and asked his help, Tyblad, Juliet's cousin, challanges Romeo to a duel, because he went to the ball and he wasn't invited. Romeo refuses, but Mercutio, Romeo's friend, accepts the duel for Romeo and he was killed by Tybalt. Romeo wants to take a revenge and he kills Tybalt. Exiled Romeo from Verona by the Prince, Juliet asks again To Friar Laurence his help and he offers her a drug which will put her into a death-like coma for two hours. The Friar sends a messanger to Romeo to inform him, but he doesn't receive the message, so he goes back to Verona and, after that he kills Paris, he drinks a poison and dies near Juliet. When she awakes and sees Romeo dead, she kills herself with the Romeo's dagger. The families are reconciled by their children's deaths and agree to end their violent feud.

Language and structure:
Shakespeare uses also a variety of poetic forms: he alternates Shakespearean sonnet, sermon and sentential forms, he uses aq unique blank verse form the Petrarchan sonnet form and he uses the contemporary sonnet form. There is often a shift from comedy to tragedy. Shakespeare uses different forms of poetic language during the play. There are 14 lines prologue in the form of a Shakespeare sonnet and much of it in strict iambic pentameter. Friar Laurence uses sermon and sententie forms and the Nurse uses black verse. In the end when Romeo and Juliet meet are used contemporary sonnet form.  

Themes:

Passion and love, clash,and death, , fate and chance, light and dark and time.

Criticism and weak points:

Shakespeare employs several dramatic tecniques: the most notably is the passage form comedy to tragedy. Before Mercutio's death, the play is a comedy, then it becomes serious and takes on a tragic tone.

Charles Gildon and Lord Kames underline a failure in that the play did not follow the classical rules of drama.

In the later part of the 18th, criticism centred on debates over the moral message of the play.