Revenge in Romeo and Juliet
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In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare brings together the conflicting political and legal ideologies about the proper operation of the state as a political body that reigned during the Elizabethan Age. Specifically, he applied the motifs of the well-known revenge tragedy to demonstrate the ideological split that was occurring during his time. Ernest William Talbert's analysis of Richard II concludes that Shakespeare fused the disparate emphases in current thought about the body politic during the Elizabethan Age. In the same manner, Shakespeare uses Romeo and Juliet and their relationship to each other and to the operation of Verona to demonstrate the split between the old emphasis on community and the new emphasis on the individual that occurred during the Elizabethan Age. The play also serves as an interpellation of the duties of the ruler and the ruled to maintain peace and order. In his analysis of Shakespeare's Richard II, Talbert observes that most Elizabethans would have been familiar with the doctrine of the official sermon on obedience. Basically, this doctrine espoused that man's social and political life operated within a framework of harmony and order and ultimate redemption was available only to those who performed their duty in the state of life to which it had pleased God to call them. Talbert notes that within such a framework, which was emphasized by an authoritarian state such as that of England under
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t. Shakespeare's portrayal of the Prince can be read as an analogy for the rule of England, particularly during a time of cultural and social transition when the responsibility of the ruler may be in flux. Talbert notes that during the Elizabethan Age, the sacred name of "king" was both inherited and merited. The problem of defining and maintaining social order occurred when those two attributes were not united in one person. Thus, although the Prince, Capulet, and Montague (and even, to some extent, the Nurse and the Friar) are cloaked with inherited authority, they fail to demonstrate their merit for their positions.
Talbert argues that Shakespeare drew upon conflicting images, conflicting meanings of one image or symbol, and conflicting speeches and actions, to intensify his play-world and fuse their contraries. The transitional nature of the Elizabethan Age gave Shakespeare much fodder to use these motifs to demonstrate the questions arising in England's definition of political and social order during that time. Thus, he was able to take such politically recognizable actors such as the Prince and the aristocracy and demonstrate their equivocal nature. As Talbert notes, sometimes the truths of political commonplaces
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Approximate Word count = 2961
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)
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