Essay On Romeo

/ 3 May 2007

Here’s an essay that I wrote in English on Romeo. The essay is a fairly long one describing Romeo as a character. It’s mainly in the extended body.

An Essay On The Character Of Romeo Montague From Shakespeare’s “Romeo And Juliet” Alex Celeste 5/2007 I’ve chosen Romeo Montague as the character to write an essay about. Romeo got married and committed suicide at age 14 or higher (it never really says in the script or any of the movies I’ve seen so far). This shows that he was one messed up kid that had strange ideas about life and love. He was a Montague, but loved Juliet (who was already set to marry Count Paris), the only daughter of his worst enemies, the Capulets. Romeo spent most of his time away from his family and instead wandered in the woods or by bodies of water thinking about love. He went immediately from just liking Rosealine to first meeting, loving, and marrying Juliet within 5 days (in fact, the whole play lasted only 5 days). That shows that decisions he makes are on-the-spot and without much thought (which is quite a bad idea if you ask me). At the beginning of the play Romeo had his mind all in a jumbled mess due to who he loved and who he liked and the complications that arose from those fighting thoughts.

Two friends of Romeo are Friar Lawrence and Mercutio. Romeo liked Friar Lawrence as a friend because he understood that the marriage of Romeo to Juliet could cause the civil brawls that went between the family of Capulets and the family of Montagues to come to a permanent halt. Friar Lawrence also acted a small bit like a father to Romeo when he talked to Romeo in certain scenes of the play including the one in the field where he was picking out herbs for medicine and saw that Romeo hadn't been to bed that night (this was also the first scene that Friar Lawrence showed up in). Mercutio was a friend of Romeo's because he helped Romeo sneak into some strictly "No Montague" parties like the one where Romeo first met and fell in love with Juliet (and her with him). He also helped Romeo as any fellow kinsman would in various tasks and helped him on hard problems Romeo had in his head like the fighting thoughts of Rosealine with Juliet. To his death by Tybalt's sword, Mercutio had no idea that Romeo was married to the family of their eternal enemy though Juliet.

An enemy that Romeo had was Tybalt Capulet. This cousin of Juliet found his way into any brawl the two families had and in the end was killed by Romeo for killing Romeo's best friend, Mercutio (as mentioned in the above paragraph). Romeo had no such respect for Tybalt for being his brother-in-law and instead wanted to get Tybalt off the planet with his sword. At the beginning of the scene Romeo didn't want Tybalt dead, but after Tybalt ended Mercutio's life he did want Tybalt dead. He managed this in the end but was banished for it by the Prince.  He wasn't that happy that he killed Tybalt, though since it meant immediate death or (as it was in the end) immediate banishment. Romeo ended up in a way worse position at the end of the fight than he was at the start of the play.
Romeo changed during the play by having his love change from Rosealine to Juliet. He stayed alive until the final scene but committed suicide over Juliet’s deeply-sleeping body ending his life. As mentioned above, Romeo also managed to lose the privilege of living in Verona. In the end Romeo’s character changed a lot throughout the play as a whole. The key time I noticed this was when he married Juliet and saw in himself a potentially better person. The feeling of the character changed from that time and didn’t switch back to the old Romeo who was caught up in multiple loves after that scene. This change was brought on from Juliet primarily, but also from the way that people acted around Romeo (an example is the scene where the Nurse comes to have a word with Romeo). 
The one way that Romeo stayed the same throughout the play was his love and care for his family and fellow kinsmen. His love for his homeland of Verona, Italy never changed, infringing on the sadness he had when he heard he had been banished and would be killed if found in the city. His actions around others (kindness and in those small cases fighting) and around Juliet (loving her) stayed the same throughout the whole play as well (aside from killing himself for Juliet's fake suicide to get back to him).

In both of the first two films we've watched ("Romeo &amp; Juliet", and "Romeo+Juliet") they managed to portray the character of Romeo Montague in the right ways according to me and my perspective on the character based on Shakespeare's original script. I liked that they portrayed the main characters in as much detail and original-ness as possible. My perspective is that most characters created by a writer have their underlying requirements open and able to be changed play-to-play and movie-to-movie. Also, the way I look at it, the requirements set by Shakespeare in the script are such and the small amount of them mean that there's no way that the director of films and plays can get any character portrayed wrong. Based on that, nothing really surprised or disappointed me much regarding how the characters and surrounding were portrayed.</i>

I hope that you’ve enjoyed the essay. Enjoy, Alex

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