culminating 1

[Alex]

1. Starting with a fight scene will really engage the audience. It is a strong and exciting way to start off a play. Although it might have been dodgy at the time because to do a fight scene in a play well it needs a lot of rehearsal and if you stuff up one thing then it will stuff up the whole scene and just make it look cheap. But if done well it should attract the audience so they start off with a good impression of the play which makes them to look forward to the rest of the play. So in theory Shakespeare has pumped up his audience for the huge epic love story of Romeo and Juliet. In those days they loved violence, they would even pay to watch people publicly die. So Shakespeare put this scene in to pitch at the majority of people in the audience who liked violence which was mainly the less-wealthy people, who occupied most of the theatre.


2. reasons for the feud
• to make people think for themselves instead of hand feeding them all the information
• he wanted people to walk out of the play thinking about the story and why the two family’s would hate each other
• On the previous point, they might want to see it again to get a greater understand on the feud. Which means more money for the play.
• Perhaps Shakespeare just couldn’t think of an idea for the start of the feud or he just didn’t want to
• Because the story of Romeo and Juliet was a true story perhaps Shakespeare didn’t find out a reason for the feud when he was researching it so to keep the story’s originality he just didn’t put a reason in

4. Well this is a really opinionated response question and a bit of character analyses. I think that they were right to continue their. It doesn’t matter what family they come from if they love each other then that’s all that should matter. I believe that they could have had a successful relationship in the end because now the Capulets and the Montagues are family. Therefore they pretty much have to stop killing each other because family don’t kill family. So to make their only children happy they would have had to call off the feud.

6. When Friar Lawrence made his discussion to marry Romeo and Juliet I believe that he weighted up the pros and cons that could come from the marriage of Romeo and Juliet. The two arguments that come to my mind were that the Montagues would become a joint family with the Capluets and the feud would therefore stop. The other option is that this marriage will just infuriate the two families to a point that will give another reason to extend the feud and would probably end up in Friar Lawrence being killed. However he took the risk and married the two lovers make their families one. I believe that that Friar Lawrence made the right choice because the risk ended up paying off in the long run. I would have made the same choice as well because there was a lot more to gain than lose in taking the risk of marrying Romeo and Juliet.

[Steve Shann]

C.