Romeo And Juliet
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Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet is one of his most famous plays that embrace the theme love, hate and death. The play is a tragically devastating love story about Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is a complex play of heart that revolves around their romance and their parents hatred for each others family. Two characters that exceedingly alter the lives of both Romeo and Juliet are Mercutio and Friar Lawrence. Mercutio is Romeos best friend, who is known to be a comedian among their group of friends and Friar Lawrence is Romeos advisor, who wants to bring peace among the Capulets and the Montagues and help his dear friend Romeo to solve his love dilemma. In the play, Mercutio is famous for his Queen Mab speech (Act 1, Scene 4) and Friar Laurence for his soliloquy (Act 2, Scene 3) both speeches are placed in the novel at such a point where they hold the maximum amount of relevance to the tragic end of the play. The body of this essay will consist of three paragraphs. The first of the three will break down and introduce Mercutios speech, the second will do the same to Friar Lawrences soliloquy and the third will discuss the details and what the two speeches reveal about their characters, the imagery that intricately connects itself with the characters and scenes in the play followed by the purpose of the speech in William Shakespeares famous Romeo and Juliet.
Mercutio is known to be a quick wit, hot tempered, comedian who is Romeos best friend in the play. He is famous for his Queen Mab speech in the play Romeo and Juliet directed by William Shakespeare. The Queen Mab speech sounds like a fairy tale. Shakespeare uses imagery of a little Queen who flies through the air in a small carriage, driven by a “Wagoner” who is a gnat. On the surface, the speech Mercutio is making seems like it is the sweetest possible connection of words put together but in reality it is the exact opposite. The speech uses a lot animal imagery. For example, Queen Mabs “cover” of her carriage is made of a grasshopper wings, which implys that somebody has actually pulled off the wings off a grasshopper and placed them in place to create the cover. The same thing goes for the spiders legs, which serve as the wagons spokes and also the riding-whip, which is made of a crickets bone.
Furthermore, Mercutio uses comparison between childrens stories and the time he stands in. For example, he does not believe it is enough for him to just say soldiers dream of war, but they must dream of [todays fearful and dangerous times] (I, IV, 83-87) “cutting foreign throatsÐand sleeps again.” As the speech goes on, it starts to sound less and less cute and the iambic pentameter that Shakespeare uses, doesnt allow Mercutio to breath between the forty-two-line speech, that only consisted of two sentences. There is a very good reason for putting this speech toward the end of Act I. It is our introduction to Mercutio, and it presents him as a likeable character. Also, at this moment Romeo is about to meet Juliet, but has not; this leaves the “consequence yet hanging in the stars” which has not shown its lovely, yet deadly face. This shows the relationship between the Queen Mab speech and Romeo and Juliets love because they both start out calmly, but end up violently.
Friar Lawrence was among one of the most significant characters in the novel. Although Friar Lawrence was not in the play as often as a character of such value would be, he greatly contributed to the unanticipated tragedy that would conclude the play. The play puts forth two major scenes that result in the death of Romeo and Juliet and the last scene that reveals the tragic end. Friar Lawrence was present during the marriage, the plan [of creating the harmless yet so deadly concoction] and the death of Juliet which soon led to the tragic death of both Romeo and Juliet. This speech is the first speech that Friar Laurence makes and this introduces us to the character of the Friar. We learn that Friar Laurence is a hard working, busy man, who makes good use of his time, he works before the sun rises and does his job as carefully as possible leaving no room for mistakes. The Friar believes that everything in nature has a useful purpose which leads to faith, everything has some sort of beneficial qualities, and many things are used in a variety or ways, if the purpose of things is misused, it could lead to misfortune and even death. This speech showed us many of Friar Laurences excellent characterestics. This speech of Friar Laurences also further the plot of the play, the important part of this speech is the part where he explains about the opposites of the nature and how they can change over time. This theory which he tries to