Alternative criticism on Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare
- Created by: _maddymaria
- Created on: 25-03-18 14:12
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- Alternative perceptions and criticism on Shakespeare's R &J
- Coincidences and improbabilities in the action
- Is it credible that the constructs of R&J change completely to fall in love?
- Romeo was previously infatuated, anguished passion and the **** of Mercutio's puns
- Number of coincidences eg. elaborate Friar plan, letter not reaching Romeo
- hastens tragedy
- killed by cruel change or fate
- victims of an extraordinary succession of missed chances
- not a realistic text - earlier literature did not depict everyday life
- no attempt to represent Italian customs accurately but a typical English Elizabethan household
- Deconstruction and Historicism
- some critics have suggested texts are shaped not by author's intentions but by societies and cultures which produced them
- everyone in Elizabethan audience would be aware that suicide is a mortal sin
- protagonists have lost all hope of salvation
- the play is silent on this issue as to introduce the notion that R J are damned would run entirely against its celebration of their love
- alerts us to omission - truth is inescapable
- there is justice in their deaths since Romeo and juliet bring their fate upon themselves through their worship of each other to the exclusion of all other moral obligations
- romeo and juliet are utterly immoderate in their obsession with each other, they are incapable of compromise
- Plot and structue
- no sub plot, no seconday story
- clear structure
- something relentless about the progress of the play, no extended discretion from the tragic tale
- compressing events into a few days was one of Shakespeare's most significant changes
- short consistent time scale is very rare for Elizabethan drama
- shakespeare makes the tragedy more pitiful simply by the swiftness of the events occuring
- their love is shortlived
- Themes
- first written in Italin by Masuccio Salernitano in 1476, rewritten again to Tragicall Historye or Romeus and Juliet
- shakespeare radically changed the emphasis and structure of the story
- story is compressed into a few dats to stress the remarkable suddenness of the lover's passion
- love has no time to develop
- their love completely overwhelms Romeo and Juliet from the moment they see each other
- highlights fragility of their love
- no moments of undisturbed happiness
- no sooner experience than it is destroyed
- a sense that the lovers are trapped, their final deaths are inevitable
- dramatically effective final scene, paris is also an unsuspecting victim of the tragedy - reaches climax of the play
- he comes to juliet's tomb shows true affection
- dramatically effective contrast to juliet's character in the nurse
- tybalt acts as a foil for romeo and benvolio
- Juliet is portrayed as 13 instead of 16, increases vulnerability
- makes a more striking development from a young submissive girl to defiant, self reliant tragic heroine
- Feminist approach
- juliet's intial submission to her father's patriarchal authority
- championing lovers in Romeo and juliet issues a challenge to the traditional notions of familial duty, gender, relations and character and status of women
- however structure of play insists that juliet's insubordination is punished as she is who dies
- it is her love for a mand and not her friendship with a woman which gives her strength
- Untitled
- Coincidences and improbabilities in the action
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