Summary Of Act 1 Of Romeo And Juliet

The first scene or chapter for any play, movie, or book serves to intrigue the audience and introduce characters or situations that the rest of the storyline is based on. Shakespeare’s intent when writing Act I of Romeo and Juliet was to draft a scene that could excite all members of the audience, illustrate the deep hatred between the Montagues and Capulets, and introduce figures in both families. Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 rendition of the scene captures Shakespeare’s intent for the scene better than the other films, even while not following the script original script word-for-word. The scene opens to two men, dressed in rich, warm colors, standing next to one another in the center of a market. One of the men in red, of the Capulet family, bites his thumb and spits to the ground as a group of men in green, of the Montague family, pass by. Alarmed, one of the men in green, a Montague, asks if “you bite your thumb at us, sir?”(1.1.47) Zeffirelli chose to omit over twenty lines between the two Montagues for the same reason Shakespeare chose to include them, to make it appealing to their audience. Zeffirelli understood that young audiences would be

Shakespeare’s audience would have understood this concept and severity of the situation better than movie watchers in the 20th or 21st century. In order to demonstrate the hatred between them, Zeffirelli needed exaggerate the fight scene. Both Montagues and Capulets draw their swords, the market is ravaged between shoves and sword slashed, and neither side pays much attention to the wellbeing of the civilians surrounding them. The men are so infuriated that even when Benvolio tries to “keep the peace”(1.1.69) they continue to fight eachother. Only through the quickly intensified battle, can Zeffirelli’s audience understand how important family honor and loyalty was to the people of Shakespeare’s