Romeo and Juliet — William Shakespeare (c.1594–96)

Romeo and Juliet is OCR's most popular early Shakespeare text for Component 02 Section B. Expect an extract-based question (15 marks) and a whole-play essay (25 marks). AO4 (SPaG) is also assessed. The play is studied for its dramatic methods, the construction of love and conflict, and its Elizabethan context.

Context — essential for AO3

Elizabethan context (c.1595):

• Patriarchal society: daughters were property of their fathers; Juliet's refusal to marry Paris is a radical act of defiance. Lord Capulet's rage in Act 3 ("I tell thee what — get thee to church o' Thursday") reflects the Elizabethan assumption of absolute parental authority.
• Marriage and family honour: in Verona (and Elizabethan England), family honour was paramount; the feud between Capulets and Montagues is not irrational — it is how honour culture operated.
• Fate and Providence: Elizabethans believed in Providence (God's plan); the Prologue explicitly calls Romeo and Juliet "star-crossed lovers" — suggesting fate, not chance, drives their deaths. The audience knows the ending before the play begins.
• Death and religion: suicide was a mortal sin in Elizabethan theology. Both Romeo and Juliet die by their own hand — a transgression that would have shocked the audience morally, intensifying their tragedy.
• Sources: Shakespeare based the play on Arthur Brooke's poem The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet (1562). By compressing the timeline from months to days, he increased dramatic intensity.

The Prologue: framing the tragedy

The Prologue (a sonnet — 14 lines, ABAB CDCD EFEF GG) does unusual work:

• It tells the audience everything: the lovers will die; the feud will end with their deaths.
• This creates dramatic irony throughout — the audience knows what the characters do not.
• "A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life" — "star-crossed" means doomed by the stars/fate; "take their life" is deliberately ambiguous (they take life = they live, AND they take their own lives = they die).
• Shakespeare makes the audience complicit in watching a tragedy they know is coming — this heightens the sense of inevitability and pathos.

Key themes

Love: Shakespeare presents multiple kinds of love in contrast:

• Romantic/courtly love: Romeo's love for Rosaline (Act 1) is performative; he uses stock Petrarchan clichés ("She is the sun"). Shakespeare deliberately shows this as not genuine love.
• Transformative love: Romeo and Juliet's love is presented as real, immediate, and transcendent — and also dangerously irrational.
• Parental love: Lord Capulet claims to love Juliet but treats her as property; the Nurse's love is practical and earthy (she was Juliet's wet-nurse).

Conflict: the play weaves personal and familial conflict throughout:

• The feud is presented as arbitrary and destructive — Benvolio and Romeo want peace; Tybalt and Capulet want war.
• Shakespeare uses contrast: the lovers' private world of love vs the public world of male honour, violence and feud.

Fate vs free will: the tension between fate (the stars, the Prologue's prediction) and the characters' choices is central. Romeo and Juliet make choices that accelerate their deaths — yet the Prologue insists the outcome was always fixed.

Key characters and dramatic functions

Character	Function
Romeo	Tragic hero: impulsive, passionate; his haste (marrying, killing Tybalt, suicide) drives the plot
Juliet	More emotionally intelligent than Romeo; her language is more controlled; she is also more aware of risk
Friar Lawrence	Catalyst: marries them; devises the plan; his message fails. Represents the failure of good intentions; raises question of adult responsibility
Tybalt	Conflict; male honour culture; foil to Benvolio; his death is the pivot of the play
The Nurse	Comic register; contrast to romantic idealism; her practical advice (marry Paris) shows limits of earthly love
Lord Capulet	Patriarchal authority; his treatment of Juliet shows how the older generation destroys the younger

Key dramatic techniques

• Soliloquy: Juliet's "Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds" (Act 3, Sc 2) — anticipation of wedding night; her language becomes passionate and urgent. Reveals private desire.
• Dramatic irony: the audience knows Romeo is banished, not dead, when Juliet mourns; the audience knows Juliet is not dead when Romeo drinks poison.
• Oxymoron: "O brawling love, O loving hate" — Romeo's language in Act 1 is full of contradictions; oxymoron captures the paradox of love and conflict coexisting.
• Light and dark imagery: developed throughout. Juliet is "the sun"; Romeo will "not be Romeo" in darkness. Light represents love but also danger (light exposes them to their families).
• The balcony scene (Act 2, Sc 2): the spatial separation — Romeo below, Juliet above — is both literal (garden vs window) and metaphorical (earth vs heaven; mortal vs transcendent). Juliet's line "What's in a name?" is a philosophical challenge to the feud's logic.

Common OCR exam mistakes

1. Focusing on Romeo and ignoring Juliet's dramatic function — Juliet is equally important and arguably more complex.
2. Not using the Prologue for AO2 — it is a sonnet; the form is significant; the dramatic irony it creates shapes every scene.
3. Confusing oxymoron with paradox — oxymoron is a specific rhetorical figure (two contradictory words side by side: "loving hate"); paradox is a broader logical contradiction.
4. Quoting the balcony scene without analysing the dramatic staging — OCR expects awareness of how the scene would work on stage, not just the words.
5. Ignoring Friar Lawrence's role — he is an adult who enables the marriage and whose plan fails. His role invites analysis of adult responsibility vs fate.