Shakespeare's Use of the Chorus in Romeo and Juliet

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Shakespeare's Use of the Chorus in Romeo and Juliet

The chorus appears at the beginning of act one and at the beginning of

act two. In the first chorus in act one they basically say that there

are two households that are both arguing lover a long term grudge and

that because of this both families children (Romeo and Juliet) are

going to die. This happens because they are both madly in love with

one another. Shakespeare tells us that our two main characters are

going to die at the start because it makes the audience tense and then

Shakespeare can focus on how it all happened rather than what

happened.

In act two the chorus stresses the problems with Romeos new found love

and how after all this time of loving Rosaline he just pushes her to

one side for Juliet. It carries on to talk about how they cannot meet

up and it has to be a secret. There are a lot of problems with this.

In each speech in the play of Romeo and Juliet there is a very odd

language that is quite poetic in a way that very few can understand.

Shakespeare loves to play with words rhymes and phrases to create a

whole new language. In each speech Shakespeare uses phrases, which to

a first glance you, cant understand but if you read it carefully and

analyse it you can understand the speeches and see what he means. For

example in the chorus it suggests that both families have pride; "both

alike in dignity," and that this certain feud has been going on for a

long time, he suggests this by using the word "ancient." This makes

the language more interesting and it makes the audience wonder why

this feud had been going on for such a long time. When using the

phrase "civil blood," this changes the mood and makes it very criminal

as if things are going on which should not be, if not possibly making

the audience come to the conclusion of murder as "civil blood," means

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