Essay On Tybalt In Romeo And Juliet

You may or may not be familiar with the story of “Romeo and Juliet” written by William Shakespeare, but one of the most widely-known characters is Juliet’s hot-headed cousin, Tybalt. Tybalt throughout the play is very protective of his cousin and expresses his distaste for the Montague family and anyone who associates with them. This is the main reason why he meets his untimely death. He is often called the primary antagonist of the story, but can that really be considered true? He was raised to believe that the Montagues were terrible people and that he was supposed to hate them. He did not want shame or dishonor on the Capulet name, so he fought to protect it. The Montagues exploited his hot-headedness to instigate fights between the families.

For hundreds of years, the Capulets and the Montagues fought, it was to the point where they didn’t even know why they were fighting. Tybalt was born and raised as the fighting got more intense, so naturally he hated them from the beginning but as he grew up, his hate kept building. His angry outbursts were often directed towards the Montagues, for instance, in Act 1, Scene 5, his anger gets the better of him when he realizes that the Montagues snuck into the Capulet’s party. Lord Capulet attempts to calm him down and he only does so for the sake of not ruining the party. Which goes to show how much respect he had for his family and their

Tybalt lost his temper frequently throughout the play, there’s no uncertainty about that. Because of this, he made very poor accusations and decisions. We see this in the very first act of the play when the fight breaks out between the servants of the families, Benvolio is attempting to stop the fight and he has his sword drawn, Tybalt sees this and immediately assumes that Benvolio picked a fight with the servants. While Tybalt could have controlled his temper better, it is also very important to remember that he was very often provoked by the actions of others. For example, his decision to duel Romeo because of his actions at the Capulet’s party could have been avoided if the Montagues would have stayed away from the party. Similarly, his decision to fight Mercutio was fueled by Mercutio’s taunts and insults. In both scenarios and almost every other scene, Tybalt is provoked and exploited by the Montagues for a