2014 YEAR 10 – ENGLISH da Vinci (Mr Brown)

Romeo & Juliet - Key Questions

Drawing from the conventions of tragedy and comedy as listed below, write a definition of ‘Romeo &
Juliet’ as a Romantic Tragedy. What elements of tragedy and what elements of comedy are to be
found in the play?
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Write a response to each of the following questions/statements ensuring that you draw at least one
specific example from the play in each of your answers;

 ‘Romeo & Juliet’ sometimes suggests itself as a comedy gone wrong. Discuss
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 Is the ‘comic action’ of Romeo & Juliet episodic and used as a contrast to the tragedy or as a sub-
plot?
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 Consider the youth of our romantic heroes; a) Does the play resonate as a tragedy because it
symbolises the tragedy of innocence (in the sense of inexperience)? b) Is it a tragedy because we
 grieve for young lives cut short? C) Does the tragedy hit home because it depicts two ‘children’
baffled by their first serious contact with an adult world?
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 Consider this carefully; Can tragedy be evaluated through the ultimate success or completeness of
the hero’s achievement? This may be defined as the paradox of victory when we evaluate this
double perspective (tragedy and success). What have (or have not) Romeo and Juliet achieved?
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 It has been said that comedy tends to deal with characters in a social group whereas tragedy is
more concentrated on a single individual. Discuss this in relation to ‘Romeo & Juliet’.
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 It could be said that the loss of two young lives is a sad and unfortunate occurrence, but not
‘tragic’ in the literal/definitional sense. Do you agree with this proposition and why, or if you do
believe that ‘Romeo & Juliet’ is a tragedy, explain the reasons why you have come to this
conclusion.
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 “For never was a story of more woe / Than this of Juliet and her Romeo”. Who, or what, is
ultimately responsible for causing the tragedy? (Was it Fate? Was it Chance? Was it adolescent
passion? Was it the feud? Was it fathers? Was it the Friar? Was it … ?)
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 As we know, aristocratic families of the time married for advantage (i.e. social, economic, political,
and strategic) but not for ‘romantic love’. Consider Capulet and Lady Capulet as we get to know
them, especially from Act 3 onwards, are they typical of an arranged marriage? Romeo and Juliet
do marry for love and we can see the consequences! In Arthur Brooke’s earlier version he states
that his Romeus and Juliet, “attempted all adventures of peril for the attaining of their wished
lust;…abusing the honourable name of lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts”, so
I would hazard a guess that Arthur was not big on romantic love – His two young lovers were
lustful creatures who received their just desserts!

Where do Shakespeare’s sympathies lie? Did he believe in romantic love? Does he want his
audience to believe in romantic love or is the fate of his lovers a cautionary tale to others who
wish to break societal norms?
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 If the man who wrote, ‘My Mistress Eyes are Nothing like the Sun’, (which subverts and makes fun
of the language and character of the melancholy courtly lover), also wrote ‘Romeo & Juliet’, why
does he stick so faithfully to the convention of the courtly lover in representing Romeo in the
play’?
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 You are Shakespeare; why did you take the decision that Paris had to die in the final Act? Why
wasn't he simply one of the mourners after Romeo & Juliet's bodies were found? Why did you
decide that the plot required Romeo to kill Paris?
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Notes on the genre of ‘Tragedy’

 The fall of a leader
 The tragic hero has to be of a properly heroic size, but his fall is involved both with a sense of his
relation to society and with a sense of the supremacy of natural law
 The typical tragic hero is somewhere between the divine and the “all too human”
 Tragedy belongs chiefly to the two indigenous developments of tragic drama in 5th century
Athens and 16/17th century Europe from Shakespeare to Racine
 Both belong to a period of social history in which an aristocracy is fast losing its effective power
but still retains a good deal of ideological prestige
 The theory of tragedy is that the act which sets the tragic process going must be primarily a
violation of moral law, whether human or divine
 One theory contends that all tragedy exhibits the omnipotence of an external Fate. That is, many
tragedies leave us with a sense of the supremacy of impersonal power (God/Fate) and of the
limitation of human effort. However, fate, in a tragedy, normally becomes external to the hero
only after the tragic process has been set going
 In comedy time plays a redeeming role: it uncovers and brings to light what is essential to the
happy ending. In tragedy there is normally a recognition of the inevitability of a causal sequence of
events leading towards a tragic end
 Tragedy brings with it a sense of sacrifice. Tragedy is a paradoxical combination of a fearful sense
of rightness (the hero must fall) and a pitying sense of wrongness (it is too bad that he falls)
 Comedy is much concerned with integrating the family and adjusting the family to society as a
whole: tragedy is much concerned with breaking up the family and opposing it to the rest of
society

Notes on the genre of ‘Comedy’

 What normally happens is that a young man wants a young woman – his desire is resisted by some
opposition, usually parental, and that near the end of the play some twist in the plot enables the
hero to have his will
 The movement of comedy is usually from one kind of society to another
 At the beginning of the play the obstructing characters are in charge of the play’s society. At the
end of the play the device in the plot that brings hero and heroine together causes a new society
to crystalize around the hero
 The appearance of this new society is frequently signalized by some kind of party or festive ritual,
e.g. a wedding, which appears at the end of the play or takes place immediately afterward. (In ‘As
You Like It’ there is a quadruple wedding!) The audience feels part of the ritual, indeed in older
forms of comedy (and in existing forms such as Christmas pantomimes), actors occasionally threw
food into the audience
 Comedy therefore, moves towards a happy ending and the normal response of the audience to a
happy ending is that this is how it should be, which is a kind of moral judgement (in a social sense)
 Comedic devices that create impediments to the course of true love running smoothly include;
illusions created by disguise, hypocrisy, unknown parentage, incorrectly overhearing others
conversations, etc.
 The obstacles are usually parental, and comedy often turns on a clash between a son’s and a
father’s will (or older generation v. younger generation). Think about how this convention is still
used in American romantic comedy movies
 The tendency of comedy is to include as many people as possible in its final society: the blocking
characters are more often reconciled or converted. Comedy often includes a scapegoat ritual of
expulsion which removes an irreconcilable character
 Through the uniting of young lovers followed by marriage, society is refreshed and renewed. The
best of the next generation have matured to take their places at the head of society. The older
generation have passed on the baton to a new generation and good (moral) social order is
assured, as is the continuity of good governance
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