A Comparison of Death Scenes of William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet

A Comparison of Death Scenes of William Shakespeare's Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet

The two plays were written by William Shakespeare but they are both

completely different stories. However they have one thing in common,

each has a murder scene. The main character in Macbeth is Macbeth

who meets some witches who tell him what will happen to him, They

say ‘Hail Macbeth, Thane of Cawdor’ and another witch tells him ‘Hail

Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter’. This makes Macbeth think as

he becomes the Thane of Cawdor which makes it seem like he will become

king and the only way is to kill Duncan. Lady Macbeth is the wife of

Macbeth and keeps pressing him into killing Duncan, who is the King of

Scotland at that time and who likes Macbeth and gives him the title of

Thane of Cawdor.

The murder scene starts in Act 2 scene 1. Near the end of the scene

Macbeth sees a dagger in his mind drawing him towards Duncan’s room.

Then Lady Macbeth sounds the bell which is a signal that she has

drugged the guards and it is safe for Macbeth to kill Duncan. He

then goes and kills Duncan off stage. When he returns on stage he

has two bloody daggers and is in a distressed state of mind. He

tells Lady Macbeth about the killing and she tells him he should have

left the daggers there but he can not do it so she does. He then

goes to the well and tries to wash his hands of the blood but it will

not come off.

The main characters in Romeo and Juliet are Romeo who is the son of

the Montagues and who is in love with Juliet and later marries her,

she is the daughter of the Capulets. Benvolio is Romeo’s cousin

and a Montague who hates...

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... castle door and they

both scurry off stage covered in blood. This leaves the audience

wondering if they will get found out. This is not conclusive till

later in the play.

In contrast in Romeo and Juliet the two murders are a total surprise

to the audience as there is no real lead up to them as they happen

after Tybalt and Mercuito exchange words with each other which was

followed by a fight. Tybalt inflicts a mortal wound on Mercuito and

Mercuito leaves the stage with Tybalt. The audience still do not

know of the death of Mercuito until Benvolio comes back onto the stage

and lets the audience know he is dead. This is a total shock as

Mercuito is a very likeable character with no enemies. The

audience’s response is to want revenge, justice and the death of

Tybalt. Romeo eventually carries this out.