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Analysis of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
Romeo and juliet analysis tragedy
Analysis of Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare
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The narrative voices in songs and literature express a male characters enthusiastic responses towards female characters. “Michelle” is a song by Sir Paul McCartney which was sung at the white house to the Obama family. The song expresses a man who is unwilling to express his feelings towards her as she is supposedly a native French speaker. Romeo and Juliet lines 44-53 are an excerpt of a play written by William Shakespeare. In lines 44-53 Romeo expresses how beautiful Juliet is when he first lays eyes on her. Considering what is said in these sources we can see how a male responds to seeing a woman he is attracted to which motivates him to convey his affection verbally and allows him to reveal his inner emotions. In the song “Michelle”
This rhetorical feature is only one of a large arsenal that Shakespeare utilizes to convey his story. Romeo begins his ritualistic display of affection in a grand manner, his language resplendent with beautiful imagery. At the open, there is little dialogue; Romeo must first woo his intended. This being achieved through antithetical couplets to highlight the differences between Juliet and everything inferior around her; 'Juliet is the sun...Kill the envious moon ', 'She speaks yet she says nothing ', are prime examples of this technique. This is also often assisted by; 'godly ' references that of 'heaven ' and that of the 'angel, ' to emphasize his rhetoric. Indeed, the rhyming verse adds a pleasant sound to the ear, to heighten the effect of Romeo 's words, a technique very much commonplace in that era of
William Shakespeare is well known for being a poet, playwright, and actor. Shakespeare's work appears to be very sexist in gender roles. He uses gender roles in his 'Romeo & Juliet' play. Juliet being the main and most important female role in this play; is supposed to be noble and respectful, but instead she goes against her father’s wishes and acts more educated than she really is. Romeo being the main male role in this play is supposed to be focused and noble, but instead he is passionate in love and isn't very wise with decisions but in comparison to Paris, who is very masculine, focused and noble shows a real renaissance male. This paper will demonstrate how Shakespeare uses gender role reversement ; by having feminism and masculinity, arrangement of marriages, and compare and contrast of different characters to prove the model of genders in Elizabethan England.
Imagine being a woman in sixteenth century Europe. Females were raised to believe that they were subservient and that men knew better on any subject. Basically, women had no rights. They were considered property, first “owned” by their fathers and then control was “transferred” to the husband chosen for them. Marriage was not about love, but in most cases, it was a business deal that was mutually beneficial to both families – an interesting fact is that like young women, most young men had no choice in the selection of their future betrothed. These traditions and the gender roles assumed by men and women at that time had an impact on Shakespeare’s writing and performances and a great example of this is evident in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
lady, O it is my love". The audience wants to think he is sincere so
Although Shakespeare’s female parts may have major roles in his plays, he manages a submissive way of treating his female parts throughout his play. He portrays his female roles as followers not leaders. His female characters are also delineated as property of the male characters. The female roles also are viewed as weak in comparison to males. Shakespeare creates his males dominant and his females submissive.
...er” (Shakespeare 9) and “eternal lines” (Shakespeare 12) both refer to Shakespeare’s desire to immortalize the subject’s beauty. The final, and undoubtedly greatest difference between the two works, is the method of expressing them. A sonnet is meant to be recited, unlike a song, which is always accompanied by a melody and vocals. Dolly Parton’s soft and feminine voice beautifully complements the lyrics, and the upbeat music further enhances the warm and cheerful atmosphere of the song. Despite the differences in structure and time period, Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18” and Dolly Parton’s “Love Is Like a Butterfly” share similar themes, and are great representations of how love can be expressed through literature.
Naturally, one of the most reoccurring themes in Shakespeare is romantic love. It is perhaps not a coincidence that he put so much emphasis on this elusive and enigmatic emotion. In the Elizabethan age when he was writing, the arts were being explored more fervently, and thus raw human emotions began to surface in the mainstream culture. In Twelfth Night, love is a confusing and fickle thing, as demonstrated in the relationships between Duke Orsino and Olivia; Olivia and Viola/Curio; Malvolio and Olivia (she certainly has an effect on men doesn't she?); Duke Orsino and Viola/Curio. However, the characters seem to have a love-hate relationship with Cupid. Within the first line of the play, it is glorified: "If music be the food of love, play on..." (Duke Orsino, I:I). And while Olivia is annoyed with Orsino's affection, she craves Curio's.
In “Romeo and Juliet,” a play written by William Shakespeare, women were portrayed as ranking below men and always expected to act poised and subdued. If they attempted to possess any more power than what was given to them by men, others would view them as stepping out of their place and misbehaving. In most scenarios, when a man is talking to a women, the words and phrases that they use have a connotation of being very dominant and controlling.
Shakespeare’s story, Love Labour’s Lost, focuses the story on the endearing lust of men. Women are a powerful force, so in order to persuade them men will try to use a variety of different resources in order to attract the opposite sex. Men will often use their primal instincts like a mating call, which could equivocate today to whistling at a woman as she walks by. With the use of lies to tell a girl what she wants to hear, the musk cologne in order to make you appear more sensual, or the cliché use of the love poem, men strive to appeal to women with the intent to see his way into her heart. William Shakespeare is a man, who based on some of his other works, has a pretty good understand and is full of passion for the opposite sex. Nonetheless, whether it had been honest love or perverse lust, Shakespeare, along with most men, aimed to try to charm women. With keeping this understanding of Shakespeare in mind, his weapon of choice, to find his portal way into a woman’s heart, was his power of writing.
When a man is attracted to a woman they express the feeling mutually. An example would be in “Michelle”, sang by Paul McCarthy where a man sings to his lover in French. Context clues point to the fact that she does not speak English, which is why he sings in French, “the words she will best understand.” In “Romeo and Juliet”, written by William Shakespeare, Romeo spots Juliet and immediately notices her great beauty. By saying what he did, he shows her that he noticed her over all the other ladies in the room. Looking at what both sources portray about how men show their emotions, we are to see that when a man feels attraction towards a woman, they are compelled to express this by talking and complimenting the woman they feel attraction to.
It portrays societal morals and ideals where a man is supposed to objectify women and enjoy fighting and women are supposed to be docile and obedient to someone else’s command. Though these ideals are displayed and made clear, Shakespeare has his characters challenge society’s morals in their actions and personalities. Though Juliet had proven herself to be more impressive because she was more “masculine” than Romeo, Romeo’s more “feminine” nature was also admirable. Seeing Juliet as a powerful protagonist was inspiring, but Romeo’s ability to love her so much despite his friend’s and what society tells him is almost equally as
Early modern England was a highly patriarchal society. One of the many preconceptions of Shakespeare’s audience was ideas about gender. At that time, people valued certain characteristics in women and a completely different set in men. Women experienced suppression and were expected to be obedient. Shakespeare’s society was highly invested in the domination of women. Obedience was not just desirable - it was considered necessary. For the male-dominated society to function, women had to submit to the rules of men. A large component of obedience in women was that they were expected to be seen and not heard. This silence was synonymous with chastity, whereas expression was perceived as a sign of promiscuity. Thus, the audience valued meek, obedient and silent women; anything else threatened their conceptions of proper female behaviour. In his plays, King Lear and Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare challenges the social ideologies by creating a rebellious daughter who refuses to be subservient to her father. The daughter struggles to negotiate a passage into adulthood and marriage with her father’s blessing; while the father struggles to relinquish the young woman to another man – her future husband.
In The Tragic Story of “Romeo and Juliet” Romeo is in love with Rosaline, but she doesn’t love him back, so Romeo has to find someone else and he finds Juliet and expresses his feelings to her. In the song “Michelle” by Paul McCartney he speaks in French to Michelle. He speaks that way because Michelle probably doesn’t speak English and the only way for the character to speak to Michelle is by expressing how much he loves her. Similarly in The Tragic Story of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo expresses how he feels about seeing Juliet for the first time much like how the character in the song expresses his feelings to Michelle. In The Tragic Story of Romeo and Juliet when Romeo sees Juliet for the first time he expresses his feelings with poetry and
Although the women in Shakespeare’s time where not given the opportunity for their voices to be heard, Shakespeare gave them a voice through the production of his plays. In both A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear, Shakespeare highlights the ways in which male superiority impedes with the lives of females, he also queries and mocks the accepted patterns of prescribed feminine and masculine behaviors. “While female characters such as Regan and Goneril take on masculine characteristics and King Lear takes on feminine characteristics, Shakespeare demonstrates that men and women are forever searching for a balance between their gender roles, and that this can sometimes be corrupted by power” (Ink).
Although William Shakespeare reflects and at times supports the English Renaissance stereotypes of women and men and their various roles and responsibilities in society, he is also a writer who questions, challenges, and modifies those representations. His stories afford opportunities not only to understand Renaissance culture better but also to confront our own contemporary generalizations about gender, especially what it means to be female. In his own time, Shakespeare seems to have been raising questions about the standard images of males and females, about what the characteristics of each gender are, about what is defined as masculine and feminine, about how each gender possesses both masculine and feminine qualities and behaviors, about the nature and power of a hegemonic patriarchy, and about the roles women and men should play in acting out the stories of their lives. Since feminist criticism today focuses on many of these same issues, we can bring such critical inquiry into the classroom by asking straightforward questions of and about Shakespeare's stories.