...Hate is an overwhelming emotion that is an integral portion of society; expressed greatly in media such as literature. This emotion is additionally vital in a play written by William Shakespeare. A famous poet during the Elizabethan era, one of William Shakespeare’s plays entitled, Romeo and Juliet demonstrated the impact hatred has on the people it surrounds. Romeo and Juliet is a play set in Verona, Italy in which two people, infatuated with each other, venture to extreme lengths to complete their desires in opposition to the venom held between their families, conclusively leading to their demise. This feeling of detest blinds entities from morality and influences them to commit regrettable mistakes, much present in modern society through...
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...of the Function of Speed in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and Juliet is an avalanche. As a loose pebble in the snowcapped mountain wobbles in the wind, Romeo yodels to Juliet in the cliffs just to send it tumbling, lightly, down a vertical abyss. It does not end there, of course, for this pebble held back the rocks and boulders constituting the height of the peak, and the reaction now begins as each individual stone rolls with momentum. They pick up speed and snow, growing in velocity and size until the inevitable occurs and Romeo and Juliet are engulfed in the upheaval and finished forever. William Shakespeare’s version of the play Romeo and Juliet, taken from Arthur Brooke’s play similarly titled Romeus and Juliet, is a fast paced tragedy in which a boy and girl from two feuding families meet, fall in love, bond in matrimony, and commit suicide in a matter of four days. Compared to the nine-month romance that takes place in Brooke’s play, Shakespeare’s version is a consciously hastened piece of work during which the most significant parts of a young couple’s lives begin and end in less than one week. Speed, a well-utilized literary tool in Shakespeare’s play, serves to emphasize emotion, as opposed to reason, in the characters’ decisions. Through this device, Shakespeare demonstrates his skills as a playwright by showing control of time in the play. Perhaps the most well known episode in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the balcony scene is a prime example of passionate...
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...ROMEO & JULIET Prologue (ACT 1) As a prologue to the play, the Chorus enters. In a fourteen-line sonnet, the Chorus describes two noble households (called “houses”) in the city of Verona. The houses hold an “ancient grudge” (Prologue.2) against each other that remains a source of violent and bloody conflict. The Chorus states that from these two houses, two “star-crossed” (Prologue.6) lovers will appear. These lovers will mend the quarrel between their families by dying. The story of these two lovers, and of the terrible strife between their families, will be the topic of this play. ANALYSIS This opening speech by the Chorus serves as an introduction to Romeo and Juliet. We are provided with information about where the play takes place, and given some background information about its principal characters. The obvious function of the Prologue as introduction to the Verona of Romeo and Juliet can obscure its deeper, more important function. The Prologue does not merely set the scene of Romeo and Juliet, it tells the audience exactly what is going to happen in the play. The Prologue refers to an ill-fated couple with its use of the word “star-crossed,” which means, literally, against the stars. Stars were thought to control people’s destinies. But the Prologue itself creates this sense of fate by providing the audience with the knowledge that Romeo and Juliet will die even before the play has begun. The audience therefore watches the play with the expectation that it must...
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...lead to tragedy and despair. Romeo and Juliet may be the most famous of the great literary tragedies. The feud between the Montagues and Capulets prohibits the love and ultimately results in the death of the “star-crossed lovers”. It may be difficult to truly determine who is to blame for the tragedy because their lives were influenced and affected by many figures. But the question is, who is most to blame for the death of the two lovers? I believe that Friar Lawrence is to blame for the death of Romeo and Juliet. He easily could have prevented their love from being too strong by not marrying them. If he didn’t act so courageously and think that their marriage would end...
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...Romeo and Juliet: Are the Parents to Blame? In every tragedy, it is a common goal to find out who or what is to blame for causing the event. This allows us as humans to punish the culprit or declare the event and accident. In the case of Romeo and Juliet, it is no different. There is a part of every reader who wants to know what happened to drive the star-crossed lovers to their death. Was it their parents or was it the naive teenagers? It was both. Both sides of the tragedy lacked communication with each other, seeing others points of view, and not putting in the effort to listen to each other. Throughout most of the drama, readers are exposed to the two opposing sides of a rooted family feud. The Capulets and Montagues want absolutely no relations between one another at all. This feeling of isolation from one another is...
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...consulting you. This decision is a decision you could not be unhappier with. What do you do? In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet finds herself in the same situation, and decides to go against her father’s decision. Little did she know that her loving and caring father was the complete opposite of what he seemed: a false friend. Juliet’s father, Lord Capulet, was a friend to his daughter as long as she obeyed him. The second Juliet didn’t do as her father pleased, Lord Capulet became her mortal enemy. In the end of the play, Juliet and her lover Romeo try to escape from Lord Capulet and his wicked plans, seeking help from a close friend; Friar Laurence. The Friar makes a plan to help Romeo and Juliet escape from Verona and give them a happy life in a city by the name of Mantua. The plan is to give Juliet a potion which makes her appear to be dead. Once Juliet is placed in a casket and left in memorial grounds, Romeo is to come in the night steal her away to Mantua. The plan is not properly executed, and Romeo is not properly informed about the specifics of the plan. Because of this confusion, Romeo and Juliet end up taking their own lives. Though this was an act of suicide, Lord Capulet is entirely responsible for the deaths of the two lovers. Romeo and Juliet’s pitiful and tragic end was a product of Lord Capulet’s actions such as forcing Juliet to marry Paris, throwing a party, and his ongoing feud with the Montagues....
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...Translator’s Coming of Age by Omaya Ibrahim Khalifa Through studying the three translations of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet done by Mohammed Enani in 1965, 1986 and 1993 respectively, this study adopts a diachronic approach. In addition to examining the historical dimension, this study attempts to address itself to crucial questions related to the process of translating a literary text. A few of these are: how a translator can approach a given text in three different ways and how each translation changes according to the approach and the methods chosen by the translator. More importantly, the study proposes to discuss the pragmatic conditions governing the act of translation and how far these result in prominent modifications in the relationship between the source and target texts. The first part of this study discusses the problem or problems which confront a translator attempting to transpose Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet into Arabic, and the second analyses the three translations and how each deals with the problems discussed. Mohammed Enani, in his introduction to his third translation of Romeo and Juliet, singles out tone as the main difficulty that faces any translator attempting a rendering of the play. In the Elizabethan era romance was regarded as a subject for comedy and as such allowed playful treatment. Harry Levin explains that Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet was an innovation at the time. He reveals the effect of the play on contemporary audiences as follows: ...
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