Romeo and Juliet, written by Shakespeare, is well known for its portrayal of true love, but how does Shakespeare portray a believable love story? In my analysis, I chose to focus on the way Shakespeare uses a mirroring effect. Throughout the play, Romeo and Juliet display many similarities, including the way they describe each other, and their reactions. These are the two similarities I focused on and I did this by looking at three scenes. The scenes I chose to focus on are Act II Scene II, more specifically, Romeo’s monologue in which he expresses his feelings about Juliet, Act III Scene II, when the Nurse informs Juliet of Romeo’s banishment, and Act III Scene III, when Romeo learns from Friar Lawrence that his punishment is banishment. The three scenes were combined into one scene with three actors instead of four. In addition the group made choices regarding props, costumes, staging and blocking. These choices, along with playing Romeo, helped me to further explore Romeo and Juliet’s love and its believability.
In the beginning of the performance, Romeo and Juliet are sitting back to back center stage. Both characters are delivering monologues about each other. The characters are represented back to back to visually show a mirror effect. While Romeo and Juliet were saying different words, they were both comparing each other to the stars, heaven, the moon, and the sun. When speaking an important part of the monologue, the actor would face out toward the audience. In addition, the actor’s voice would crescendo drawing the audience’s attention towards their important dialogue. During the double monologue, I drew attention to “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars, As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven Would through the airy region stream so bright That birds would sing and think it were not night.”
Here, Romeo is figuratively saying that she is she is bright and she would make birds think it is daytime. Romeo is making the point that Juliet stands out meaning she is special. Juliet makes a similar point in her monologue, which is taken from Act III Scene II. She says “Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.” Juliet is saying that when Romeo dies, his face should be in the stars because his face is so beautiful. During these sections of each character’s monologue, they both refer to night. By referring to each other in the same way, the audience can see that Romeo and Juliet have the same amount of deep love for one another. Another important aspect to mention is that the monologues are not said to each other. They are both delivering the monologues to themselves in the play and in my version, they are delivering them to the audience at the same time without noticing each other. This also expresses the idea of true love. Not only are they describing each other with similar emotions, in the scene, they never speak directly to each other.
Our staging is also very important to the idea of Shakespeare’s mirroring. Above I discussed the way Romeo and Juliet sat back to back. Throughout the scene, center stage was kept as a boundary with Romeo and Juliet on different sides of the stage. The third character, a mixture of the Nurse and Friar Lawrence, appeared on both sides of the stage, first talking to Juliet and then Romeo. This character, referred to as the Councillor, changes from one part of the scene to the next. The reason these characters were combined was to emphasize the similarities between the other characters. This was easy because in the play, the Nurse and Friar Lawrence both play similar roles in Romeo and Juliet lives. We also made the similarities more obvious to the audience by displaying similarities in the actors. Romeo and Juliet were both played by girls while Romeo was played by a guy. This was also shown by the costumes we chose. The costumes worn by Romeo and Juliet were similar in color rather than style. They were both dressed in orange/red. While Romeo was played by a female, the actress was wearing pants and a shirt rather than a dress to still display that he is Romeo. In contrast to Romeo and Juliet, the councillor wore all white. This difference in color in addition to the fact that Romeo and Juliet’s costumes were a little more elaborate than the councillor’s costume. The costumes and the staging were added as finishing touches on the scene, but they added a lot to the scene and added attention to the mirroring my group was attempting to portray.
Outline:
A. Focus and explore the part of the scene between Romeo and the councillor and Juliet and the councillor
Mention mattresses
“O, she says nothing, sir, but weeps and weeps;
And now falls on her bed; and then starts up,
And Tybalt calls; and then on Romeo cries,
And then down falls again.” -the Councillor
Mirror same actions as each other
Relates to love- Romeo stands when hearing about Juliet
Juliet falls because she can’t see Romeo
“'Tybalt is dead, and Romeo--banished;'
That 'banished,' that one word 'banished,'
Hath slain ten thousand Tybalts.” -Juliet
“Ha, banishment! be merciful, say 'death;'
For exile hath more terror in his look,
Much more than death: do not say 'banishment.'” -Romeo
Compare quotes above (idea that banishment is worth than death)
Relates to love because they would rather die than be without each other
Both mention killing themselves and Romeo even draws sword
B. How this relates to the storyline- discovery about family feud
SO similar
Councillor character can exist due to similarity
Character probably raised the same
So why feud?
Feud is irrational?
Relate to believability
C. Conclusion
Conclusions about mirroring effect
Is it believable?
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