Rachel Wilkinson

Candidate Number 1242

Ridgewood School
GCSE Shakespeare Coursework Assignment
Direct Act 3 Scene 5 of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from Enter Mother
(Lady Capulet below) to the end of the scene.

Before the stage is set for Act 3 Scene 5, we watch as Romeo

has shot Tybalt in his anger over Mercutio’s death. In this time of
rage where the lights would be dim and red, the nurse sees him and
allows him over at the Capulet’s for one night as it is his and Juliet’s
honeymoon. Of course, he has to leave as it turns morning because
he has been banished from Verona to Mantua. And so after Romeo
meets with Friar Lawrence, he rushes off to Juliet’s bedroom.

As it turns to the morning, Juliet and Romeo talk about the

nightingale and the lark. The nightingale represents the night and
the lark represents the day, just as the dark is bad and the light is
good. In this case, however, the night is good and the day is bad,
which shows a contrast to how it is normally shown. Night is
represented as a good thing for Romeo and Juliet as he can stay for
longer without anyone knowing that he’s there, but as he’s been
banished, the day is represented as a bad thing. This is because he
needs to be out of Verona as soon as the light shines, or else he’ll be
in even more trouble than already.

As Romeo leaves Juliet’s bedroom, Juliet lays still on her bed

crying softly. The Nurse is sat on the side of Juliet’s bed, gently
rubbing her shoulder to try and comfort. This shows that the Nurse
and Juliet are close to each other and shows that the Nurse is more
like a mother figure to her. As Juliet carries on crying on the bed,
footsteps can be heard as Lady Capulet walks towards her room.
She shouts ‘Ho, daughter, are you up?’ This probably shows that she
doesn’t really visit Juliet in her bedroom in the morning, and so it’s
quite unusual. We can see that it is evidently unusual as Juliet
replies by asking herself who’s calling, and also asks ‘What
unaccustomed cause procures her hither?’ This could also mean
that Lady Capulet and Juliet are not close, which gives away Lady
Capulet not being a mother figure to her own daughter.

Lady Capulet enters the bedroom, crowded with a large, flat

screen HD television, surrounded with jewellery hanging down from
diamond and mirror holders. Around the rest of the room, sort of
parading the huge double bed, are a number of tops and dresses,
with numerous other clothing scattered all around, hanging out of
the drawers and dragged away from the coat hangers in the
towering wardrobes. Next to the designer wardrobe filled with Gucci
and Chanel, there is a cupboard, burst open with the amount of
high-heeled glamorous shoes in different colours. It’s almost as if a
rainbow is scattering itself around the fluffy ink carpet that swallows
their feet.

Capturing the attention of the glamorous room to herself, Lady

Capulet floats slowly into the room. She is dressed in a loud and
eccentric nightgown, flawlessly showing off colours like purple and
gold. This shows her rich status, and shows how important she is to
wear such bright clothes. As it’s the morning, her hair isn’t perfect,
but it still drapes gently around her neck, with blonde sparkles here
and there. Her gown open to show her glistening purple dress, Lady
Capulet loudly strides over to Juliet’s dressing mirror, psychotically
followed by maids of all sizes.

She turns towards Juliet, who is lying in a foetal position to show

the irony of being a child, even though she’s just had her
honeymoon. She notices that her eyes are filled with tears and
questions her, ‘Why how now Juliet?’ This shows that she is actually
quite caring towards her, and shows that she is her mother even
though she may not show it much. She asks after Juliet’s reply,
“Evermore weeping for your cousin’s death?” Lady Capulet asks
this, which suggests a feeling of dramatic irony. This is because she
thinks that Juliet is crying over her cousin Tybalt’s death, however
she is actually crying over Romeo leaving to Mantua. As Lady
Capulet does not realise Juliet’s anguish over Romeo leaving, she
begins to talk about how crying over the loss of someone too much
leads to “some want of wit” and only “some grief shows much love”.
She also follows this with her hatred of Romeo, which is shown by
her calling him a “villain”, clearly stated in the line “That same
villain Romeo.”

“Well, well, thou hast a careful father, child,

One who, to put thee from thy heaviness,
Hath sorted out a sudden day of joy,
That thou expects not, nor i looked not for.”
Lady Capulet suddenly announces the dramatic irony that has
happened in the play. Whilst Juliet was upstairs in her gorgeous
bedroom with her lover Romeo sharing a romantic honeymoon
together, her father was downstairs, arranging the wedding for her
and Paris. He wanted Juliet to marry Paris, to gain the status of his
family. This was obviously because Paris’s publicity is good and if
she married him then their publicity would increase also. In the
years when Romeo and Juliet was set, the society was patriarchal.
This meant that the males were in charge of everything in their
lives, and females were seen to be inferior. Further more, the fathers
were seen to be in complete control of their daughters without any
say in it from any one else. This was obviously bad news for Juliet,
as even though she was already married, it seemed as though she
would have to be married to Count Paris without turning down the
offer.
 After finding out about her arranged marriage to Count Paris,
Juliet begins to argue with her mother. She forwards lines such as
“He shall not make me there a joyful bride, I wonder at this haste,
that i must wed”, along with “I pray you tell my lord and my father,
madam, I will not marry yet, and when I do, I swear It shall be
Romeo, whom you know i hate, Rather than Paris.” The second line
shows that she is quite indefinite towards the fact that she will not
marry Paris, and it also shows irony to the fact that she is married to
Romeo already and does not hate him.

Unaware to the arguing and disobeying that’s just been going

on, Capulet’s voice is clearly heard from the great staircase leading
from the huge entrance hall. Although you can clearly hear his
vocals, who he is talking to is unknown to each highly classed and
lowly classed lady standing around Juliet’s room, arranging it to look
tidy again. As his booming voice clashes against the walls of the
rooms, his large body struts flauntingly into the bedroom. A mouse-
like Nurse, attempting to get her tiny voice through to him follows.
The Nurse does actually have a name but is only called Nurse
because she isn’t of as much importance in the play as anybody
else. She is also called Nurse because Juliet is only shown as a child
in the play and so making her call her by this name is showing that’s
she the child.

The Nurse is shown later in the play to be quite an unimportant

character. This is because when Lord Capulet is speaking to Juliet in
a bad manner about her not wanting to marry Paris, the Nurse tries
to interrupt to get him off her. After objecting to Capulet about how
it is actually his fault, Capulet cuts her speech off and carries on
loudly speaking. This is shown by the Nurse saying “May not one
speak?” By Capulet blocking the Nurse from speaking her words,
this shows that she does not deserve to speak at this time because
she’s not important enough, and shows that he’s more important.

When Lord Capulet strides into the room, his chin is high in the
air to show that he is clearly ‘better’ than everyone else is. On his
face there is a large grin, showing that he is happy and proud of
himself that he set Juliet up with a popular man. His grin is hiding
taint in his personality. This stain is the selfishness for himself. He’s
only happy about fixing Juliet up because the publicity for himself
will become better and higher, so he’s only really doing it for
himself. His selfishness and his happiness is shown as he postpones
the wedding until Thursday. This shows that he is sad and maybe
angry about Tybalt’s death, but he doesn’t want that to ruin things
with the wedding, and so he postpones it to be later on a few days.

His clothes consist of a very purple coat that is rimmed with

shining gold and a pair of very pressed black trousers. These show
that he is smart, wealthy and organised. He is wearing a lot of
jewellery around his neck, and around his arms, with a very stylish
watch. This will show his wealth as well. He will constantly stand up
and talk very loudly to show his status within the room, whereas
everybody else will be either small or will sit down on the bed or a
chair. When he enters he will automatically come to Juliet’s side and
put his arm around her gently to show his compassion and
comforting towards her. It shows a contrast between the father and
the daughter, and between the young and the old.

Juliet’s personality in this scene shines through very much.

Throughout the whole play she is shown as an innocent teenage girl,
going through her life like any other. However, in this scene she is
shown as devious, defiant, rebellious, disrespectful and also
headstrong. She is shown as disrespectful as she’s disobeying her
parent’s, doing things behind their backs and doing things that is
strictly forbidden when it comes to them. Although she’s shown as
rebellious, she liked Romeo before she found out that he was a
Montigue, which shows that she’s not actually trying to be, but she
is.

During this scene Capulet becomes angry, and it shows in a few

lines. His threatening tone towards Juliet is shown by the lines “My
fingers itch” and “soft take me with you wife”. The soft tone in his
voice, which he uses to comfort her, is replaced with selfishness and
the feeling of flabbergasteredness. His flabbergasteredness is shown
when he asks Lady Capulet “How will she none?” He later imitates
Juliet’s voice to insult her. His voice rises to a whiny, high pitched
stupid little girl’s voice, which shows that he only thinks of her as a
little girl at the time being. As Capulet being even angrier, growling
softly with his voice, Juliet tries to manipulate him by kneeling down
and begging to him. She seems weak on the outside but on the
inside she is scheming a plan and also manipulative to try and get
her own way with things.

After Capulet leaves the room, restraining from hitting Juliet but
frustrated with how angry he is, the lights on stage go dim and red.
This is to represent the anger, but to show that as he’s left it’s not
really there as much. Juliet seeks help in what to do from the Nurse,
but she walks away as she can’t help. She knows that Romeo killed
Tybalt and so she doesn’t want to help as revenge.